Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The Patriarchal Cult

The Purity of Vengeance by Jussi Adler-Olsen

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Read as part of CBR17 Bingo: green cover. See photo. I’ve had some major life changes this year; mostly good, some not so good. As a result, I’m not only behind on my reading but I’m not cataloging here like I usually do. Maybe at some point, I’ll do a series of posts on the books I’ve read this year that I just didn’t have time or energy to write about. I lift this up because I’ve been diving through the Department Q series thanks […]

Paranormal Activity but Passive-Aggressive

The Book of Cold Cases by Simone St James

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Bingo Square: B (Book) This wasn’t my favorite St. James, though it was still an entertaining read. But when reading a Simone St. James novel, I guess I just want a bit more ghost story to it all. Of course there is a ghost and a supernatural connection because it is after all a novel by Simone St. James but after a spooky set up in the beginning, the supernatural elements feel a bit less relevant for the plot than in some of her other […]

Kin in Far-flung Places

A Disappearance in Fiji by Nilima Rao

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CBR17 Bingo: Diaspora – This story is intimately bound up in the experience of the Indian diaspora in colonial Fiji, who went to work there as indentured servants but were in reality little more than slaves. Caught between demotion and disgrace, Indian police officer Akal Singh is instead posted to colonial Fiji, where an investigation into the vanishing of an indentured Indian woman from a sugarcane plantation is complicated by the political pressures within the British Empire. I’m a sucker for an unusual setting in […]

A Bit of a Dud

Finders Keepers by Stephen King

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Bingo: Red Stephen King’s Finders Keepers is the second book of the Bill Hodges trilogy. The first book was Mr. Mercedes, which I enjoyed. This second book was a bit sluggish, although the pacing was fine. The story itself didn’t have a lot of pep. The book centers on Peter, a teenage boy who comes across a stash of money and dozens of Moleskine notebooks full of writings. The stash was put there by a criminal named Morrie, who robbed and killed his favorite author […]

The final case for Susan Ryeland?

Marble Hall Murders by Anthony Horowitz

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CBR 17 BINGO: Red (see cover) Anthony Horowitz is back with what is most likely the last Susan Ryeland/Atticus Pünd mystery. I’m sad to see the series wind down, but how many times can a person get involved with the same franchise to disastrous results without breaking the audience’s suspension of disbelief? (This isn’t Jurassic Park for heaven’s sake.) If you’re a fan of Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders, you might be wondering how Horowitz could squeeze another novel out of this premise, what with […]

Multigenerational missing girls and ripple effects

Salt Bones by Jennifer Givhan

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Salt Bones fulfills the “family” square on CBR17 Bingo. Actual rating: 4.5 stars Salt Bones is a story of myth, which missing girls matter, and cycles of generational pain. I was really excited to read this based on the premise of Persephone and Demeter story through a Mexicali perspective, and this was great. There are so many different mother-daughter dynamics explored, and all of them dealing with different kinds of trauma. The Veracruz family seems to be cursed because twenty years ago Mal’s younger sister, […]



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