Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A Rollicking Tale of Revenge, and a Reckoning with Grief & Regrets

Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby

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Two fathers; one black, one white. Two sons; married and murdered. One driving mission: find out who did it, and make them pay. Ike Randolph got out of jail 15 years ago and has been on the straight and narrow ever since. But cops knocking at a Black man’s door is never a good thing. In this case, it’s the worst thing. Ike’s son Isaiah has been murdered in cold blood, alongside Isaiah’s white husband Derek. Neither Ike nor Derek’s father Buddy Lee had really […]

Mothers & Daughters, and the Wilderness

Heartwood by Amity Gaige

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Just a few days away from completing the Appalachian Trail, through-hiker Valerie Gillis has gone missing. Beverly, a Maine State Game Warden with an impeccable track record for finding missing persons, is lead on the case. She knows that the first few days after someone goes missing are the most crucial, and so she coordinates search parties, aerial surveillance, and scent dogs in a race against time to find Valerie alive. Valerie is well and truly lost in the Maine woods, and we learn about […]

A slow burn with fire breathing dragons

Assistant to the Villain: A Novel by Hannah Nicole Maehrer

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Like This Will Be Fun, Assistant to the Villain is a romance/fantasy with a good amount of humor  and thrilling adventure thrown in. Assistant is the first book in a series, and I found this one entertaining enough that I will definitely be reading the next installment Apprentice to the Villain (the third book, Accomplice to the Villain, just came out this year). I’ve sort of accidentally found myself reading romantasy lately, and frankly, it’s kind of a nice break from reality. I liked Assistant […]

This Mess is Pretty Neat

Mess by Michael Chessler

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The colorful cover of the book and its glitzy (and ditzy) Hollywood backdrop easily lure the reader in, for a quick beach or travel read. The chapters are set up as vignettes to showcase various Hollywood types and their messy lives – and how heroine Jane, a professional organizer (think a cross between a celebrity assistant and a devotee of lifestyle guru Marie Kondo), can brave the traffic of Los Angeles freeways and twisty/turny roads in the Hollywood Hills to save them all. Author Mike […]

A new spin on an old idea

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno Garcia

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Moreno Garcia does an amazing job setting the right mood in this newer gothic tale. Set in Mexico in the 1950’s, you forget that the world is more modern than what Noemi Taboada experiences. Having grown up in Mexico City to an affluent family, Noemi’s life is more about finding a worthy suitor and getting married than education or developing skills to join the workforce. Despite this, Noemi is a confident, charming, smart woman who would like to study at the University. While she enjoys […]

The Bloody Chamber

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

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I recently decided to re-read The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter (it was my choice for my book group). It was as fun as I remembered. Carter’s sexy takes on traditional fairy tales like “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Sleeping Beauty” and “Puss in Boots” is at times over-the-top in its prose, humor, and horror – which suits her feminist takes on damsels in all sorts of distress perfectly. She delivers a great vampire tale, “The Lady of the House of Love,” too.  But I think […]



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