Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Messin with Sasquatch

Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre by Max Brooks

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50% World War Z, 35% Limetown, 15% Blair With Project = Devolution. Max Brooks is at it again with his trademark blending of non-fiction narrative prose with fictitious sci-fi events. In this case, he uses the “found footage” style of Blair Witch to tell the story of a yuppie commune in the Pacific Northwest ravaged by what appears to be Bigfoot-type creatures. Instead of film, though, researchers find a series of journals in the empty and devastated rubble of the commune. The journals seem to […]

If Get Out and Midsommer Had a Book Baby

I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid

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On its surface, this novel is about an unnamed twenty or thirty something narrator traveling with her boyfriend, Jake, to his parents’ remote family farm for a first ‘meet the parents’ dinner. As the two are driving there, our protagonist begins to have doubts about the relationship (“I’m thinking of ending things”) but ultimately decides she can’t say anything until they’re back home in the city. Once they arrive at Jake’s parents, everything starts to shift in vaguely unsettling ways- dead animals frozen and stacked […]

An excellent book but not my cup of tea

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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I read Gods of Jade and Shadow and thought it was enjoyable, so I was excited to read Mexican Gothic.  I’m not sure my expectations were met. Noemi is a socialite in the upper-class of 1950s Mexico City. She goes to parties, she flirts, she wears beautiful gowns because she actually enjoys them, and she wants to go university against her family’s wishes. Noemi’s life gets upended when her father asks her to go check on her cousin Catalina who has written a strange and disturbing […]

A compelling mystery, an intrepid heroine, a musty creepy mansion… and colonialism

Mexican Gothic by Sylvia Moreno-Garcia

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The book opens up from the perspective of a boy out on a party with a flighty, superficial and possibly spoiled socialite.  I think this was intentional on the part of the author.  A party girl is not what we expect to be a heroine of a story, much less a horror one.  Noemi Taboada is a lovely heroine. Unusual in that she is smart and strong (as most heroines are) but also flighty, stubborn and a socialite who enjoys going to parties and flirting with […]

Kids can be very scary

We Hear Voices by Evie Green

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This book scared the crap out of me. It has the combined terrifying issues of children, murder, mysterious institutions, and other creepy shit. This horror story follows a boy named Billy who has an imaginary friend named Delfy. At first, Delfy seems like a harmless, developmentally approrpriate figment of a young boy’s imagination; but Delfy soon evolves into something malevolent. Something uncany about this book is that it takes place in the future, in a world where a pandemic has swept through the population. Meanwhile, […]

The Last Month in Reading

The Twisted Ones by T Kingfisher

Devolution by Max Brooks

The Return by Rachel Harrison

Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead by Sara Gran

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I finished my last semester of college! I graduate on Wednesday! Yay!!! The last month has been completely filled with work and wrapping up assignments, so I haven’t read anything in the month of May. But I’ve got a few reviews from April that I never got around to posting, so here’s a dump filled with some great reads. Looking forward to having the summer to read! I think I said in a comment on my very first review for CBR (of The Hollow Places […]



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