Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

An excellent book but not my cup of tea

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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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 […]

if it feels too good to be true…

The Whispering House by Elizabeth Brooks

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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 […]

I held back my indifference long enough to write the review. So, that’s good.

The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson

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On November 13, 1974, Ronald DeFeo Jr shot and killed his entire family in their home on Long Island: both parents and his four siblings (ranging in age from 9 to 18). One year later, George and Kathy Lutz bought the house, and, along with their three kids, moved into the house in December 1975. 28 days later, they moved out, leaving all their belongings after claiming to have been victims of a traumatic haunting. Which is utter horseshit. Perhaps that goes without saying – […]

I’ve read scarier ghost stories for kids

The Family Plot by Cherie Priest

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Mrs. Winthrop is determined to get rid of her home. It is an old, Southern Tennessee beaut of a home filled with original wood stairs and rails, original furniture from when it was built way-back-when, filled with old family belongings that to the Music City Salvage team will be worth a fortune. After the patriarch of the family-run business purchases the home he sends in his team to gather the scrap: daughter Dahlia, drunk nephew Bobby, Bobby’s son Gabe, and unrelated worker Brad. They show […]

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad…House

It Will Just Be Us by Jo Kaplan

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A knock at the door. A series of frantic knocks at the door. Yes, It Will Just Be Us  nearly starts with “it was a dark and stormy night”. Our narrator, Sam, is a down-and-out adjunct professor of archeology barely hanging onto her sanity. After a series of upsetting events, we find her moving back to her crumbling, ancestral mansion in on the edge of a foreboding Virginia swamp. The mansion is, for all intents and purposes, haunted. It’s haunted by the living specter of her […]

cbr12bingo – Cannonballer Says

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

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Y’all really got me with this one! Bothari43 first grabbed my attention with an excellent review/cat pic combo, then Bea Pants increased my interest with promises of broad swords and dirty magazines. I don’t usually read much Science Fiction/Fantasy, but after the surprise hits of new favorite Becky Chambers (whom I would not have found without the help of Cannonball), I decided to give it a go! I was wary at first of the breakdown of Houses; I am often scared off by complex mythologies, […]



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