Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Two Star Reviews

Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty

White Houses by Amy Bloom

The Favorite Sister by Jessica Knoll

The Widow by Fiona Barton

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Tonight’s reviews will focus on books that were a little … disappointing because I have to write those reviews at some point and now is as good a time as any. At least my first lackluster books checks off a few Bingo boxes! CBR Bingo: Reading TBR Nine Perfect Strangers, Liane Moriarty I put Nine Perfect Strangers on my TBR two months before its release and bought a copy within a week of its debut yet somehow it took me seven months to pick it […]

Kate Waters is back!

The Suspect (Kate Waters #3) by Fiona Barton

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This is the third of Fiona Barton’s novels featuring a crime reporter named Kate Waters. Once again, she teams up with Detective Inspector Bob Sparkes to solve a case. This time, however, it hits close to home. Waters starts by looking into the disappearance of two British girls on holiday in Thailand. But soon she learns her own missing son may be involved. “Everyone wants to know the truth. Except those who don’t. Those who stand to lose by it.” I enjoyed this book, which […]

Backpacking in Thailand goes terribly wrong

The Suspect by Fiona Barton

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I pre-ordered this book and it was delivered to my Kindle on January 22nd, just as I finished my previous book.   Perfect timing.  Fiona Barton is a UK author and the book is set in the UK and Thailand.  Two 18 year old girls go backpacking in Thailand at the start of their Gap Year.  A Gap Year is largely an English “thing” (although South Africans and Australians tend to do it too), where teenagers take a year off between school and college.  They work […]

A wheel-spinning waste of time

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I’ve been on a ‘thriller’ kick recently, because I’ve been needing to keep my brain engaged while I’m nursing my three-month-old. These “next Gone Girl”s seem to be sitting well, because they’re mostly interesting enough that I want to keep reading them even when I’m tired and brain-dead. (When I’m all the way tired, though, I’m doing a Dorothy Sayers reread. That’s a lot of fun, and I know the stories well enough that my brain can gloss over bits and I don’t lose out!)  The Widow is one […]

If the titular widow lived up to the cover blurb, this would have been a book worth reading

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I must have put this on my TBR because I’m a sucker for marketing and this book was supposed to be this year’s Girl on the Train, which was that year’s Gone Girl, and so on it goes by that publishing rule that says that female authors are good for certain things, and right now that thing is “suspenseful books about marriages where things aren’t all that they seem and also there is an unreliable narrator and someone is dead/missing.” I don’t mind how many […]

Obsession

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If you are looking for a gritty British detective/mystery novel for the weekend, Fiona Barton’s The Widow is a fine choice. Set in the years 2006-2010, the plot involves Internet chat rooms, child porn and a missing toddler named Bella Elliott. Our main characters are Detective Bob Sparkes, who is obsessed with finding Bella, journalist Kate Waters, who is obsessed with getting the scoop, Glen Taylor, who is obsessed with child porn, and his wife Jean, who tries her best to protect her husband and […]



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