Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

There’s Always Room in My Life For Middle Grade Mysteries

The Bell, The Book, and the Spellbinder by Brad Strickland

The Chessmen of Doom by John Bellairs

by Leave a Comment

I got these books by mistake since I confused them with John Bellairs’ other middle grade gothic horror/magic series starring a boy being raised by his grandparents. I cut myself some slack for this one, especially since I also read this Johnny Dixon series as a child and the titles were familiar. I do still want to do a re-read of the Lewis Barnavelt series, so I’ll have to get my hands on those soon. My idea in getting these was to read the series from […]

An excellent book but not my cup of tea

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

by Leave a Comment

I read Gods of Jade and Shadow and thought it was enjoyable, so I was excited to read Mexican Gothic.  I’m not sure my expectations were met. Noemi is a socialite in the upper-class of 1950s Mexico City. She goes to parties, she flirts, she wears beautiful gowns because she actually enjoys them, and she wants to go university against her family’s wishes. Noemi’s life gets upended when her father asks her to go check on her cousin Catalina who has written a strange and disturbing […]

A compelling mystery, an intrepid heroine, a musty creepy mansion… and colonialism

Mexican Gothic by Sylvia Moreno-Garcia

by Leave a Comment

The book opens up from the perspective of a boy out on a party with a flighty, superficial and possibly spoiled socialite.  I think this was intentional on the part of the author.  A party girl is not what we expect to be a heroine of a story, much less a horror one.  Noemi Taboada is a lovely heroine. Unusual in that she is smart and strong (as most heroines are) but also flighty, stubborn and a socialite who enjoys going to parties and flirting with […]

if it feels too good to be true…

The Whispering House by Elizabeth Brooks

by Leave a Comment

THEN IT IS! RUN! Freya, our protagonist, is a willfully clueless horror heroine. Were The Whispering House a movie, we would all be shouting at her every time she was on screen. Don’t open that door! Don’t drink that tea! Don’t go up those stairs! Don’t look behind you! Don’t move in to the crumbling manor house that is somehow connected to your sister’s suicide days after meeting the charming yet off-putting man of the house! Just…DON’T! A blurb on the cover of my ARC states […]

Dracula sucks…but the book doesn’t!

Dracula by Bram Stoker

by Leave a Comment

Dracula sucks but the book doesn’t. I go through phases of reading classics or otherwise tackling books with reputations of being difficult. Sometimes it’s easy to see why books are classics – they’re timeless and engrossing. A Tale of Two Cities is that way for me. So is Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. Other times the classics feel like archaeological work. The reader is excavating and extrapolating. Dracula felt like work to me, but the reader can definitely appreciate the book’s influence on future work. In particular, […]

Spoooky

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

by 1 Comment

Counter-intuitively, this Gothic horror novel was an absolute joy to read. My attention span in 2020 is limited at best, but I could not put down Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic. Her main character, the impetuous and steel-spited Mexico City socialite Noemí Taboada, is truly alive. The rural Mexican setting is a delight, and the creepiness level is appropriate for those of us less versed in horror. Noemí Taboada is a Mexico City mover and shaker. She lives in the 1940s-50s era, and has expansive ideas […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo