Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“He wants to punch something, but he knows that would do nothing but bust his knuckles. Having that much sense makes him feel old.”

The Searcher by Tara French

by 1 Comment

So this is the first time I am participating in Bingo and I am so excited! I love the card and I have finished a few books, so I am ready to go…. I was out of the ‘mystery’ frame of mind for some time. I think, for a while, I was concerned that many mystery series that I enjoyed portrayed police officers in a way that didn’t sit well with me given so much police inaction and violent action around the US, where I […]

Love Languages

Normal People by Sally Rooney

by Leave a Comment

Like many, I bought into what Sally Rooney was selling here hook, line, and sinker. It’s not just because she tells quite a story in a beautiful way. It’s because, like few writers I’ve read, she engages in the subtleties and nuances of human emotion. It’s hard writing any book but without question, there’s a higher degree of difficulty in telling the “how” of it. Romantic novels are familiar in structure: two lovers, frequently star-crossed, try to find peace amidst the many challenges. But to […]

June 2022 Leftovers

The Cage by Bonnie Kistler

Gangsterland by Tod Goldberg

Gone 'Til November by Wallace Stroby

Cover Story by Susan Rigetti

Survivor's Guilt by Robyn Gigl

The Old Man by Thomas Perry

Iron Annie by Luke Cassidy

The Drop by Michael Connelly

The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy by David Nasaw

Barbed Wire Heart by Tess Sharpe

Amateur City by Katherine V. Forrest

Booth by Karen Joy Fowler

The Fury of Blacky Jaguar by Angel Luis Colón

He Kills Coppers by Jake Arnott

Lysistrata by Aristophanes

by Leave a Comment

I was dealing with work turmoil and on vacation for most of June so I didn’t get the chance to write as many in depth reviews as I’d have liked to. Which is a shame because some of these deserved a longer look; I just didn’t have the time or energy… The Cage **** I went back-and-forth on my review. I’ve been giving out a lot of 4-star reviews lately and considered docking the book for that reason since it’s very borderline. But the more I […]

Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes

White Bones (Katie Maguire #1) by Graham Masterton

by Leave a Comment

Have you ever seen these pictures of a professional illustrator who let her four year old finish her drawings? That’s exactly what this book is like: it starts off well, a little weird but well done, and then in the second half of the book it’s amateur hour. On steroids.  On a remote Irish farm, eleven bodies are discovered: their bones are haphazardly strewn about underneath a barn. Weirdly, each thigh bone has a hole in it with a small doll on a wire looped […]

You’d Be Lucky to Have Your Body Found

The Vanishing Triangle by Claire McGowan

by Leave a Comment

In the 1990s, eight women vanished from the same area in Ireland. Their cases are officially unsolved, their bodies mostly undiscovered, their stories untold. The trouble with true crime is that, with so many ongoing cases, it is easy to overlook individual ones, especially when the trail has grown cold. In this book, the author strives to correct this by telling us the tales of these women and many others who were abducted and murdered in Ireland during this time. I found the writing engaging […]

I love sassy Irish lasses

Roots by Tara O'Connor

by Leave a Comment

Roots deals with the interesting concept of well, Roots: the roots that are our family’s history, finding our place to finally set them down, and dying our hair. This graphic novel is a sweet peek at Tara O’Connor after her divorce. Which of course, was not sweet, but even in the more somber moments, there is always a glimmer of hope. As the reader I had the feeling of reading her diary as Tara takes us through the journey of lost love and trying to […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo