Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Anyway, we delivered the bomb.”

In Harm's Way by Doug Stanton

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A lifelong Jaws fan, the most I ever really knew about the USS Indianapolis was what was related by Quint in one of my favourite scenes in cinema, so when I spotted this book, complete with its same-surname-as-me author, it was a must buy. It turns out – as always –  that reality is far, far more horrifying than any Hollywood blockbuster could ever wish to be. For those who don’t know what happened to the Indianapolis and her men, a brief synopsis. Fresh from […]

Wilder Girls Seemed Tame

Wilder Girls by Rory Power

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This book began with an interesting premise: there is some sort of outbreak on a small island off the coast of Maine. The only inhabitants left on the island are remnants of an all-girls boarding school, guarded by a fence, some guns, and their teachers. The girls slowly start to mutate with unexplainable systems, and so does the wildlife on the other side of the fence. This book felt similar to Lord of the Flies. Who is in charge? Why are they in charge? Is […]

Basic Witch

The Possession by Michael Rutger

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The first novel of Michael Rutger’s, which I read and reviewed for Cannonball last year, was an off-the-wall terrifying tome about a YouTube film crew getting lost in an isolated part of the Grand Canyon and stumbling upon a bizarre and terrifying relic of unknown earth history in the process. ‘The Anomaly’ was CRAZY and scary and addictive and disgusting and claustrophobic, somehow, laugh-out-loud funny at times.  The characters were as close to flesh and bone as you can get in a spooky story and […]

Wanting to go back down the rabbit hole

Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire

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It’s official: Seanan McGuire is my new favorite. After really enjoying Sparrow Road and then realizing I’d have to wait a near-eternity (or maybe it just seems like it) to get the sequel from the library, I found on the shelves Every Heart A Doorway, first in another series (Wayward Children) by the same author. The basic premise is intriguing: what happens to the people who find their way into fairy tale worlds (like Alice in Wonderland etc) but then end up back in their […]

Murder Your Darlings

Bunny by Mona Awad

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This one was recommended to me by a friend of mine and I’m glad I gave it a shot. While it’s not my normal thing, Mona Awad’s prose is crisp and she tells a good story. The whole thing is a horror/satire work on the nature of grad school work and the feeling of belonging or not belonging to a particular clique. I think the horror bits work better than the satire ones. When Awad shifts into situations of hyperrealism and dream states, she describes […]

Unfortunately this Imaginary Friend just wouldn’t go away

Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chbosky

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Christopher and his single-mother are starting over in a town. Christopher must savE the worlD. He’ll need all thE helP he Can geT. FrOm hiS friendS. From his moM. And from his new imaginarY frienD. The Nice Man. Over 900 pages of this book were written like that: short, declarative sentences; fragments; strange, unnecessary capitalization; breaks in the sentence and paragraph. It’s all very Chbosky. At first, the style choices work. The breaks and short sentences create a tone and a mood that leave the […]



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