Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Luckily the puns stop at the title

Naughty in Nice by Rhys Bowen

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CBR12 Bingo: Gateway I love cozy mysteries, but what I’ve been realizing is that I often love the idea a lot more than the execution. It seems like so many cozies are full of characters I don’t really like, or they’re kind of dull, or they’re just badly written. I’m so happy to have discovered the Her Royal Spyness series, where I love the characters, the plots are interesting, and they’re also funny and engaging. Naughty in Nice is actually the 5th book in the […]

“A missing girl is missing only to the people who notice.”

Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery by Robert Kolker

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Bingo Square: Reader’s Choice. Replacing Violet In May 2010, Shannan Gilbert ran shrieking from a house in Long Island and disappeared. Others had seen and heard her that night, but no one could help find her. The small community of Oak Beach mostly went back to their lives. Then, seven months later, a search dog found the remains of four bodies alongside a nearby highway, not far from where Shannan disappeared. The assumption was that one of those bodies would belong to Shannan. Instead there […]

The real message here is to limit your children’s screen time

The Mother-in-Law by Sally Hepworth

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CBR12 Bingo: Pandemic This is another entry in the ever-growing genre of “twisty” books aimed at women. I admit I am always tempted by these books–I have to know what the twist is! And for the most part, I actually enjoyed The Mother-in-Law, unlike some other entries into this genre. The book opens with Lucy and her husband receiving a visit from the police to tell them that Lucy’s mother-in-law, Diana, with whom she has never gotten along, has been found dead by apparent suicide. […]

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

The Fellowship of the Ring by JRR Tolkien

The Two Towers by JRR Tolkien

The Return of the King by JRR Tolkien

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CBR12 Bingo: Yellow When I was a kid my dad read the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy to me. I’d already read The Hobbit, and of course as a kid I preferred the simplicity and accessibility of that book, but I can still remember the moment that my dad and I finished reading The Two Towers: “Frodo was alive but taken by the Enemy.” Whew. Eat your heart out, The Empire Strikes Back–that is a killer ending to a Part II of a trilogy. […]

Being a superhero can cause super problems in a relationship

Super Adjacent by Crystal Cestari

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While this is a fun YA book about superheroes and the people who date them, it also brings up some relevant points about obsessions with celebrities. Switch out the superheroes with movie stars or singers and some of the issues that come up in this book can easily be seen in today’s society.   Claire is a fangirl, no doubt about it.  (She has good reason to be, up to a certain point.)  She follows the Chicago branch of the Warrior Nation superhero team obsessively […]

Not too bad for a first novel!

The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow

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To all of those naysayers who say that fanfiction is not legitimate, I present Exhibit A, The Other Bennet Sister, along with all of the other Pride and Prejudice “variations” or alternate stories.  This is what fanfiction is, taking something and putting your own spin on it.  The only difference is that the copyright has passed on P&P, so people can publish their stories, whereas you can’t really do that yet with Harry Potter or The Avengers or whatever.  (Although if you talk to the […]



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