Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“I know what’s best for you” is insulting for anyone over three years old

My Soul to Keep by Tananarive Due

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This one is basically an allegory about an abusive marriage, but it went to some interesting places. Dawit/David is immortal. He was made immortal by Khaldun hundreds of years ago in what would become Ethiopia. He can be hurt, but he heals. He can die, but he comes back the next morning. He’s lived multiple lifetimes, married, fathered children, learned different careers and languages. Currently, he’s married to a reporter named Jessica, with a five-year-old daughter named Kira. With this version of family, he’s actually […]

A book I asked, “Why that was there?” (A lot.) But learned as I read.

When We Were Magic by Sarah Gailey

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When I first looked at When We Were Magic by Sarah Gailey, I immediately put it down again. I was not in the mood for witches, teen girl drama or magic. But when I found it sometime later, I thought, oh why not? Not like I had to finish. Yet, I would go onto finish, even with misgivings. There is a slow beginning to this teen novel. In fact, the whole pace of the story can be slow with a rushed and mostly incomplete, unsatisfying […]

Will You Ever Win?

Dream Girl by Laura Lippman

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Laura Lippman continues to outdo herself. After an entertaining (but pedestrian by recent standards) standalone in The Lady on the Lake, she again finds the form she had in Sunburn. I don’t know yet which is better but I know I liked them both a lot. While I guess it’s somewhat of a mystery, this book is a horror, with transparent shades of Stephen King’s Misery. And yet, Lippman is able to make it a work all of her own by taking the piggish perspective of Gerry, the writer, and […]

Abandon hope all ye who enter here

When darkness loves us by Elisabeth Engstrom

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The first thing you need to know about When darkness loves us is that it comprises of two short stories. The second thing you need to know about it is that these are not happy stories. The first story (from which the book takes its title) is about Sally Ann Hixson. Sally Ann is (only) sixteen and recently married (yep – the book was written back in 1985, but…still). Her husband works at Sally Ann’s parents’ farm trying to save enough money so that they […]

Perfect summer anthology for the anti-romance beach reader

Otherworld Chills by Kelley Armstrong

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My summer reading has already been cut short by longer days, and the end of restrictions meaning I want to DO something. (Not that reading isn’t doing something, but I meant exercising my body more than mind). With that in mind, one of my favourite authors, Kelley Armstrong has a couple of anthologies of her short stories hanging around. I had read the entire ‘Otherworld’ series but hadn’t gotten through the anthologies yet. This book in particular has some stories of secondary characters from Otherworld […]

My high hopes for horror were halted

Things We Lost in the Fire by Mariana Enriquez

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I read another one of Enriquez’s collections of short stories, The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, earlier this year. I loved that collection so much. In my review, I called it the ‘most effective collection of short stories I [had] ever read’ and a ‘knockout’. I figured that Things We Lost in the Fire would be similar. Unfortunately that is not the case. In Things We Lost in the Fire, we have the same elements in each short story present in the collection of short stories in The Dangers […]



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