Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Monks & Nuns & Ivy Oh My!

The Last Heir to Blackwood Library by Hester Fox

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I’ve read some real stinkers lately but luckily this gentle gothic mystery wasn’t one of them. The story begins in London, 1925, with young Ivy Radcliffe hurrying to her appointment with an unknown solicitor. Ivy lives a life of poverty and struggle in the East End. She has lost her whole family somewhat recently, her father and brother in the trenches of the Great War and her mother of illness soon after. The solicitor informs Ivy that she is now Lady Hayward, inheritor of the […]

This book only has 480 ratings over on Goodreads, and I think it deserves more readers!

The House in the Orchard by Elizabeth Brooks

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I was actually given this book for free in my first Aardvark Book Club box, so it wasn’t one I was really interested in reading, but a free book is a free book, so I thought I’d give it a shot. And I liked it! It was a little bit messy in terms of pacing, and the blurb is pretty misleading, but I was so angry by the end of the book, I have to give it props, because it managed to get me invested […]

“I call it relief, though it was only the relief that a snap brings to a strain or the burst of a thunderstorm to a day of suffocation. It was at least change, and it came with a rush.”

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

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Even though after reading Henry James in school several times and then declaring him my nemesis, for he is the master triumphant of the never-ending sentence, and saying I would never read from him again, I could not then resist the pull of an audiobook narrated by Emma Thompson, and indeed I am glad I did not do so. Phewf, done with that nonsense. That is what it is like to read Henry James. The first paragraph in The Wings of the Dove nearly killed […]

Don’t Look Now & Other Stories

Don't Look Now & Other Stories by Daphne du Maurier

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I bought this collection a few months back and then never got around to finishing it until now. Apparently insomnia has claimed me again, and I finally finished some books and put some others on the DNF list. Per usual, here are my ratings for each story in the collection. Overall I gave this 4 stars since some of the stories were baffling to me. I don’t know what message I was supposed to be getting. “Don’t Look Now” (5 stars)-John and Laura are a […]

The Sundial

The Sundial by Shirley Jackson

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If this had been shorter. I am sure I would have loved it. But it just went on and on and it took me most of last night and this morning to get through. I loved the plot, and even the opening by Victor LaValle. But the whole book just wanders and then eventually we get to what I consider an odd and open-ended ending. At least I had a chance to read this while I had candles burning nearby. “The Sundial” with an introduction […]

Melmoth

Melmoth by Sarah Perry

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So this was a 3.5 star read that I rounded up to 4 stars. I didn’t care for the Essex Serpent at all and worried I wouldn’t like this book, but I thought Perry did a good job with this. She took her own spin on Melmoth the Wanderer Novel by Charles Maturin. Just like with that book, Perry pushes the Gothic elements all the while telling several stories within the main story. I thought the writing for the most part was spot-on. I loved […]



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