Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Night and Day in Misery by Catriona Ward

Night and Day in Misery by Catriona Ward

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Trigger warning: Physical abuse is described, but not in detail. Suicide A really good friend of mine that primarily reads horror said that this book really is a great take on grief based horror fiction and I agree. Catriona Ward has explored this in some of her other works, but this one was well done. I think that it just flowed perfectly. You have the sadness for the main character, Stella, but at times man, I was mad. As things started to slot into place […]

Needless is About Right

The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward

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How many times am I going to let myself get burned by trusting in a Stephen King blurb? I love the guy, but his tastes are a little more democratic than mine. Before fans of this novel come at me, bro, I’ll offer the disclaimer that I listened to this on audiobook and the narrator’s voice, or should I say voices, really annoyed me. Anyway, the Last House on Needless Street is about Ted, a mentally unstable man who lives with his daughter Lauren and […]

The Last House on Needless Street Explores the Monster Inside Each of Us

The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward

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In the boarded up house at the end of Needless Street lives a man named Ted who drinks too much and loses time, a house cat named Olivia who sees it as her job to look after him, and his precocious daughter Lauren who never goes outside – not after what happened last time. Ted’s main hobbies are feeding the myriad songbirds who visit the backyard, and playing all the different games that Lauren makes up. That is, at least, until a murderer arrives on […]

I have to disagree with Stephen King on this one

Sundial by Catriona Ward

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We all have roots – and good, bad, or something in the middle, there’s always something to learn from them. Whether it’s understanding why you are the way you are, or recognizing that history is repeating itself and trying to stop that, or even trying to glean new information that might help you moving forward, it all comes back to where you began. And for Rob, that’s Sundial. Rob grew up with her sister on Sundial, a ranch where their father and his wife hosted […]

Family dysfunction at its worst

The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward

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This was a quick, fulfilling read and based on it, it makes me want to read Catriona Ward’s other novels. The House on Needless Street is her most recent, published in 2021. It’s one of those books that you’re better off going into blind, which kinda makes for a tough review, but I’ll do my best. Suffice to say, there’s a murder and the story revolves around it. It’s a story told from multiple viewpoints, including a cat’s. And I have to tell you, when […]

“The first thing I hate is called a Russian doll. It holds a smaller version of itself inside it, and another inside that and so on. How awful. They are prisoners. I imagine them all screaming in the dark, unable to move or speak. The doll’s face is broad and blankly smiling. It looks so happy to be holding its children captive.”

The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward

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So after a night where this book sat in my subconscious probably doing things to me, I’m upping my rating to five stars. I can’t stop thinking about it, and the ending did what I want more horror endings to to do for me. There are quite a few people who experience a sort of literary catharsis with the presence of violence and gore, but I am not one of those people (and maybe they don’t even care about catharsis! who knows!). This book has […]



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