Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Unfussy (and that’s a good thing)

The Boy from the Woods by Harlan Coben

Dead Lake by Darcy Coates

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After forcing my way through one of the hallmarks of 19th century European literature (voluntarily, no less) I decided I deserved something less fussy, and so I picked Coates (always a reliable plck for moderately scary yet uncomplicated) and Harlan Coben, whom I’d never read before and kept putting off because people were giving me high expectations.  Let me preface this by saying I’m typing this after spending the entire weekend abroad with my students and coherence is not my forte at the moment, so […]

Present Tense, Past Perfect

11.22.63 by Stephen King

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It’s 2011, and Jake Epping is a high school English teacher in a sleepy Maryland town when his friend Al, who runs an implausibly cheap diner on the edge of town, asks him for a big favour: go back in time and stop the Kennedy assassination. You see, Al’s diner has a somewhat unusual feature in its storeroom: a portal back to 1958. After a few furtive explorations, Jake agrees to go down the rabbit hole, find Lee Harvey Oswald, and stop him before he […]

I Was Looking for the “Better” Promised in the Title but it Kept Getting Worse

For Better and Worse by Margot Hunt

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TW: SA of a child  ( I did not know that going into this book, there are no details concerning it). The premise of this novel sounds very promising.  When Nat and Will date in law school they jokingly discuss getting away with the perfect murder and back as a 3L Nat thinks she could do it. They seem to have it all, good jobs, a beautiful home, a son they both love and dote on, family trips to the beach on Sundays and yet? […]

Husbands Don’t Do Anything, AMIRITE???

The Husbands by Chandler Baker

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I remember the first time I  watched The Stepford Wives ( I didn’t read the book until my teens) ,I remember being really angry and scared of those husbands.  I was little, and it was all so terrifying seeing men controlling women like that and turning them into robots.  I can laugh now, because I didn’t know it was satire and I didn’t know that I would be dealing with some men who probably find the idea of a Stepford Wife appealing.  So imagine my […]

Adventures in Babysitting

Midnight on Beacon Street by Emily Ruth Verona

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It is October 1993, just after midnight, and six-year-old Ben Mazinski is in the kitchen; there is blood and there is a dead body. So, exactly how did we get here? That is the story that Midnight on Beacon Street sets out to tell. It covers what happened in the lead-up to midnight to Amy (the babysitter) and her two charges, Ben and his older sister, Mira. It doesn’t do this linearly, but rather jumps around in time, revisiting moments from multiple points of view. […]

A lovely historical romance with some supernatural elements

The Widow of Rose House by Diana Biller

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4.5 stars Nowhere Book Bingo: Came out more than 4 years ago CBR16 Sweet Books: New (new author) It’s 1875 and Professor Samuel Moore is doing marvellously, thanks to the many inventions he and his family are coming up with. What he really wants to do, though, is investigate and possibly prove the existence of ghosts, and to do that, he requires an introduction to the infamous Mrs. Alva Webster, a widow with a scandalous reputation. Sam doesn’t really care about Mrs. Webster’s apparently lurid past, […]



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