Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“When a man dies from a bullet entering his chest, it’s a homicide. When a man dies from a meteorite landing on his head, it’s a Tragedy. Don’t use bullets. Use meteorites. Don’t commit a homicide. Commit a Tragedy.”

Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide by Rupert Holmes

by Leave a Comment

Basically, this book is murder heists. As I finally sit down to start typing this review, I still haven’t decided if I’m going to round up or down from my 4.5 star rating, so I guess we’ll see what I talk myself into by the end of these several paragraphs. Rupert Holmes, of “Piña Colada Song” fame, has given mystery lovers a real treat. Especially if you like mysteries that play with genre and format, which this very much does. Something I didn’t know going […]

A meta murder mystery about writing murder mysteries.

The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill

by 2 Comments

I had a really good time with this book. I am honestly pleased with most mysteries that I read because something about the genre makes me inherently happy, but I am always very excited when I find one that goes above and beyond the expectations of the genre, and plays around a little. This one definitely did that. It was like brain candy for me. A little treat. The book is split into two parts, the first being a rough draft of a murder mystery […]

“Do geese see God?”

A Line to Kill (Hawthorne and Horowitz, #3) by Anthony Horowitz

by Leave a Comment

I didn’t realize how in the mood I was for the vibes this series gives off. I read this book so fast. There’s something so strange yet so compelling about Horowitz’s fictional detective, Hawthorne, who continues to be unlikable, baffling (to us the readers, and to his “biographer,” a fictional version of Horowitz himself), contradictory, and yet he gets the job done, thwarting both reader’s desires and the fictional character Hawthorne in the process. It’s strange, but it works. This third pairing of the duo […]

Structure over substance

Long Division by Kiese Laymon

by Leave a Comment

I’m going to be really honest with y’all. I picked this book up for cover and description of hte structure alone. But I mean, come on. That’s an intriguing and beautiful cover. And as for the structure: this novel is told in two books. Book 1 is read like a normal book, from the front to about halfway through. To read Book 2, the reader has to turn the book over to the back and read from the back cover as if it’s the front. […]

Literally not what I hoped it would be.

Literally by Lucy Keating

by Leave a Comment

  “Sorry,” I stutter. “It’s just that…she’s describing my life.” In response to this statement, Lucy watched me coolly, her head slightly tilted to one side. It made me uncomfortable. Annabelle likes things to be ordered. Like color coded calendar ordered. So when her parents announce that they are separating the selling the family home, Annabelle’s perfectly ordered life becomes decidedly disordered. To make matters worse, Annabelle discovers that her entire life, ordered and disordered is actually just a character plot written and controlled by […]

the only Scream sequel I need

The Last Final Girl by Stephen Graham Jones

by Leave a Comment

Take the meta-horror-commentary of Scream and dial it up to eleven; there at the top of the stairs, silhouetted in moonlight and brandishing a rusty machete, you will find The Last Final Girl. Stephen Graham Jones is leaning hard into the tropes of teen slasher movies, and if you aren’t in on the joke it will fly over your freshly-severed-by-garage-door-head. The story is presented almost as a film treatment; close ups, pans, POVS, and audience responses are all written in and used with cheeky abandon. […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo