Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

I’ve read scarier ghost stories for kids

The Family Plot by Cherie Priest

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Mrs. Winthrop is determined to get rid of her home. It is an old, Southern Tennessee beaut of a home filled with original wood stairs and rails, original furniture from when it was built way-back-when, filled with old family belongings that to the Music City Salvage team will be worth a fortune. After the patriarch of the family-run business purchases the home he sends in his team to gather the scrap: daughter Dahlia, drunk nephew Bobby, Bobby’s son Gabe, and unrelated worker Brad. They show […]

Being a teenager is hard enough without the threat of total annihilation looming on the horizon.

I Hope You Get This Message by Farah Naz Rishi

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Jesse, Cate, and Adeem are all just trying to survive- even before they catch wind of an alien planet’s message to earth: you will all be destroyed in seven days. Our main trio holds a treasure trove of teen torments between them: absent parents, the desire to be loved, the inability to accept care, the need to be anywhere other than where they are. Everyone is attempting to find someone who does not necessarily want to be found, and I was worried that we’d being […]

A Blended Family Drama Spanning Decades that Gets Bogged Down By It’s Numerous Characters

Commonwealth by Ann Patchett

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This novel ended up on my to-read list after being recommended by our library’s website after I finished Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You. I really didn’t know what I was getting into though, to be honest, but I did assume that like Ng’s book, it would be some kind of personal family drama. That is certainly was, and this is a genre I usually quite like, but this time I find myself feeling a bit lukewarm about the whole endeavor. Commonwealth begins with […]

Shared Family Trauma

Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane

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Ask Again, Yes spans over four decades, and tells the story of two families, and how their lives have become tied together.  It starts when the two fathers are rookie cops together on the force, though even from this very beginning, they have very different personalities.  Francis Gleeson and Brian Stanhope are both beginning their careers in the force in the early 1970s, both are about to get married and start families, and as a result, it is not a surprise that both soon find […]

Magnificat – an incredible ending to this series

Magnificat by Julian May

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It has been a lot of fun re-reading all 9 books in this series but it finally comes to an end with Magnificat. Julian May truly has crafted a series that is extraordinary in scope and with characters who are vibrant. And that series does come full circle in this final installation. One of my favorite TV shows is Firefly and a quote from that show that I love is “It’s not about the destination, it is about the journey.” We have know from the […]

Exploring a Family Tragedy and How Things Left Unsaid Fester

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

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I’d meant to read this for a while, but somehow ended up reading Ng’s second novel, Little Fires Everywhere, first.  While this one didn’t have quite the same impact as her follow up, it was still a very good novel, and I really enjoyed the complexity she brought to all the characters, their motivations, and how she portrayed how even well meaning actions could have negative and long lasting impacts. As the novel begins, the Lee family is going through their normal morning routine in […]



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