Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Friday was back to normal, if the actions of suspicious would-be heirs competing for a two-hundred-million-dollar prize could be considered normal.”

The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin

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This was so good! I’m so mad I didn’t read it as a kid. I mean, I’m an adult reading this for the first time, and even though I’m notoriously bad at figuring out mysteries, this was still quite the puzzle. It was just as well-constructed as an adult mystery, just with a different tone. And a main character called Turtle. What I liked best about this, besides the puzzle-like nature of it, was the human kindness it had at its core. It’s been since […]

“We’re not in Ghost Busters! This is real life!”

Ghost Squad by Claribel A. Ortega

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I did not read Ghost Squad when I was young, as it did not yet exist! This is a 2020 release, and I feel that I would have liked it very much when I in third/fourth grade. There’s magic, monsters, hijinks, and plenty of cat-content that would have kept me giddy throughout. I worried at first that this tale might be “heavy” for a middle-grade reader; it starts with some genuine adult anxieties and perils. We open with the financial woes of Lucely’s father- the bank is […]

In which I mostly fuss about things that I wanted to be better

Bridge of Souls by Victoria Schwab

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Given the premise of the Cassidy Blake series (girl with ghost hunter parents can see and gets into trouble with real ghosts), it should be no surprise that the next city to be the setting of an adventure would be New Orleans, LA, USA. Bridge of Souls is on the one hand, better than its immediate predecessor, but on the other, still has some of the same problems. I should say that I do in fact realize this is middle grade fiction, and thus it […]

Power of the Greenwitch, lost beneath the sea…

Greenwich by Susan Cooper

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In 2020, I started an occasional readathon I participate in – The Dark is Rising readathon, which is a seasonal reread of my favorite book series! Basically, we read the series on its own timeline, taking on each book in the season it’s set. And so I reread the first book in 2020 summer (Over Sea and Under Stone) and reviewed it here, and then I am pretty sure I reread the second book at Christmas (The Dark is Rising) but forgot to review it. […]

ScoobyDoo for grown ups but not quite enough

Ghost Squad by Claribel A. Ortega

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So I’ve been wondering for a while why it seems to be that there can’t be ghost stories for grown-ups that don’t involve detailed often gory horror and/or a lot of unnecessary personal (self-inflicted at least partially most often) angst or troubles. Seannan McGuire’s Ghost Roads series comes close, but that’s only 2 (as of right now) books. I fine with tension and spooky and supernatural, but so much of what’s out there right now is too far into the brands of horror that I […]

Will I quit you, Riordan? I still don’t know. This review is barely about the book, which was good!

The Tower of Nero (The Trials of Apollo, #5) by Rick Riordan

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I did end up liking this series ender. As up and down as I’ve been with this series, it could have gone either way for me. This book definitely got the closest to my preferred version of the series, which had Apollo actually realizing the consequences of his actions and not just joking his way through some pretty serious stuff. Although, it still never gelled for me that Apollo the God and Lester the Teenager were the same character. There was some moves towards that […]



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