Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Grief As A Creative Force

Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova

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I honestly don’t remember where I first heard about this book – Instagram? One of the dozens of bookish emails I seem to get every single day? Maybe just scrolling through the Libby app? However it came into my life, I am really glad it did. This one is about Magos and Joseph and their son, Santiago, who has just died when the book opens. He was born with only one lung, and after his body finally gives out, Magos, in her grief, removes a […]

The Velveteen Rabbit, Unanticipated Puppet Gore, and The Stages of Grief

How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix

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The thing about Grady Hendrix novels is that I read them without bothering to read the synopses anymore. It is enough for me to see his name on the cover when Quirk Books posts about an upcoming release or I’m on my Netgalley and a new title of his pops up on my available ARCs. To me, he is a known quantity. The books of his I haven’t read are ones that I just haven’t made time for. He is, to me, a guaranteed book […]

Just like Aunt Bea

Zora, the Story Keeper by Ebony Joy Wilkins

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I read a book. I thought about it so I could write a review. And then I wondered, is this something I can do justice to? I mean, there is nothing hard about Zora, the Story Keeper. It is a story about a girl, Zora, and her beloved Aunt Bea. And in the end, after their beautiful times together, where they told stories, and costumes are worn, Aunt Bea passes away, so it is also a book of grief and holding onto the stories Aunt […]

Messy, grief-filled story

The Minus-One Club by Kekla Magoon

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Oof, this book is messy and emotional. At it’s center The Minus-One Club is a story of grief and finding your way forward after the death of a loved one, but it is also a story of friendship and identity. Kermit just lost his sister after a drunk driver hit her car head-on, and now he has to go back to school and try getting back to “normal.” But he finds an anonymous note in his locker inviting him to a secret meeting, where other […]

A Heart That Hurts Is

A Heart That Works by Rob Delaney

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Comedian and actor Rob Delaney moved from Los Angeles to London with his wife and family to write and star in the tv series Catastrophe. They settle in, but when their youngest child, who had been born in London, is a year old, he is diagnosed with a brain tumour. He dies aged two. The book relates, beautifully, the stages of Henry’s life. The initial culture clashes that come from being Americans in the UK; navigating the intricacies of the NHS for his birth; the […]

A Terribly Sad Book That Probably Shouldn’t Have Been Written at This Point in Time

Spare by Prince Harry

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Honestly, where to begin with this one considering the amount of ink already spilled about it and the endless interviews. I am coming at this from the point of view of someone most interested in pre-WWI royalty, and as someone who is interested in the generational reverberations of child abuse. I am not that invested in who is right in the current generational struggle or really in any of the individuals in this book, and I tried to approach my reading with a fairly open […]



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