Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

My Darling Girl- The classic horror premise: am I crazy or is it ACTUALLY supernatural?

My Darling Girl by Jennifer McMahon

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A spine-tingling psychological thriller about a woman who, after taking in her dying, alcoholic mother, begins to suspect demonic possession is haunting her family. Alison has never been a fan of Christmas. But with it right around the corner and her husband busily decorating their cozy Vermont home, she has no choice but to face it. Then she gets the call. Mavis, Alison’s estranged mother, has been diagnosed with cancer and has only weeks to live. She wants to spend her remaining days with her […]

The Children on the Hill

The Children on the Hill by Jennifer McMahon

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McMahon is such a hit or miss for me. The latest, was definitely a miss. I liked the idea of reimaging Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein”, but the results were not that great. I think that if the book had stayed more focused on the past before moving onto the “present” maybe the book would have worked better? I don’t know. There were so many plot holes that after a while I just threw my hands up in the air. Also there was a weird subplot with […]

Winter People – a unique take on reviving the dead

Winter People by Jennifer McMahon

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For the life of me, I really wish I could remember what site or person recommended the Winter People to me, because I want to thank them, as it was a refreshingly good read. Pet Sematary is one of my favorite Stephen King novels and this story plays with similar themes but places it in more of a historical and feminist context. The story takes place over 100 years and can switch times without warning, which I found a bit disorienting at first. You get […]

The Drowning Kind

The Drowning Kind by Jennifer McMahon

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I don’t get why so many people hated this ending. I thought it was true to the book and for once you didn’t have an author shy away from things. I will say one thing though, I don’t think it’s the “true” ending. I think it’s the ending that Jax hopes for in the end. I thought this was a great horror novel and loved us going back and forth from the present with Jax to the past with her great grandmother Ethel. I also […]

A collection that’s a little all over the place, but wholly enjoyable

Hex Life by Christopher Golden, Rachel Autumn Deering

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I do not think I am the target reader for a short story. I value stories that have complete resolutions. I want characters that have had the chance to rise and fall, succeed and fail, and sometimes more than once. These things are not always the aim of a short story. I get that, and yet I keep going back to these collections. This is one of the first collections that I have read that are all written by different authors. Though each story centers […]

with this post, you will know every book i read this year and how i felt about them

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

The Night Sister by Jennifer McMahon

The Maidens by Alex Michaelides

The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey

Night of the Mannequins by Stephen Graham Jones

We Were Never Here by Andrea Bartz

Life's Too Short by Abby Jimenez

Ten Dead Comedians by Fred Van Lente

Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss

N or M? by Agatha Christie

Rock Paper Scissors by Alice Feeney

The Death of Jane Lawrence by Caitlin Starling

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You’ve probably heard of this one already. Woman takes the regional train to and from work every day and watches for a couple who live on a house backing the tracks. She likes to make up stories about what they’re doing every day. One day she sees the wife kissing a man who’s not her husband. Because her previous marriage ended due to infidelity, the main character goes to confront the wife, whom she does not know, but her alcoholism intervenes and she blacks out […]



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