Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The Haunting of Alejandra

The Haunting of Alejandra by V. Castro

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Please note that I received this book via NetGalley. This did not affect my rating or review. Well this book packed a punch. We follow 30 something year old Alejandra. Recently moved from Texas to Philadelphia with her husband and three children, she feels adrift. You initially think that maybe Alejandra is suffering from post-partum depression. However, the book quickly moves that something seems to be haunting Alejandra. Telling her that she’s a bad mother, that her children would be better off with her, and […]

But they told so many lies this title doesn’t make sense!

All the Lies They Did Not Tell by Pablo Trincia

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The tag line of this book was “The true story of Satanic Panic in an Italian community”. I’m not sure it’s called a tag line, but cut me some slack. It’s the words under the title, and my poor tired brain can’t remember what that’s called! The tag line (or whatever!) should’ve been “The probably made up story of a bunch of kids who said their parents molested them and did semi-Satanic things”. I was not satisfied with the conclusion of this book. It’s literally […]

The scorn is as high as an elephant’s eye…

1922 by Stephen King

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1922 is a novella by Stephen King. It centers around a small family trying to run a farm in Nebraska: Wilf, Arlette, and their child Henry (who prefers to go by Hank, pleaseandthankyou). The story is written through the eyes of Wilf, who is making an end-of-life confession about the events of the titular year. As he tells it, his wife Arlette owned 100 acres of pristine farming land adjoining the family lot, and she was hell bent on selling it to a slaughterhouse company. […]

Not your mother’s book club

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

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My first time reading a Grady Hendrix novel, I did not realize he was the same author who wrote My Best Friend’s Exorcism and The Final Girl Support Group –  I imagine I will enjoy both of those novels as I quite liked this one. It gave me the same feeling as those first few seasons of True Blood, southern camp at its finest. Think Steel Magnolias, but with an added twist of body horror. Set during the late 80s and early 90s in South […]

Ghosts of Every Flavor

Chill Tidings: Dark Tales of the Christmas Season by ed. Tanya Kirk

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So this is probably very American of me, but I did not realize, Dickens Christmas Carol notwithstanding, that ghost stories are apparently a British Christmas tradition.  Hereabouts, Halloween is the spooky season.  But here we have a collection of late 19th and early 20th century ghostly tales culled from the British Library. By and large this is a fairly amiable collection of ghosts.  They have Reasons to visit the living, mostly along the lines of unfinished business, but aren’t actively looking to harm anyone.  Belief […]

“I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.”

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

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In one word: Staggering Cannonball Read Bingo: Hot I will never recover from the origins of this book. That Mary Shelley started writing it to tell a spooky story on a rainy day AT THE AGE OF EIGHTEEN is staggering. And that this story has stood the test of time and become such a classic and revisited tale, so much so that I’m re-reading this book that I read when I was 13 because my kid is now reading it at 13? Astounding. So to […]



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