Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The Sun Down Motel is a rollercoaster ride of nail-biting terror

The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James

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The Sun Down Motel hooked me from the start. I loved it that first night of reading. But when I picked it up the second night, I was filled with dread. I wasn’t sure I wanted to continue. I chalked it up to being tired and read on. I’m glad I did because it’s an amazing book. But it is a tense book, absolutely gripping and nerve-wracking. I had a headache yesterday evening from clenching my jaw while reading this. I didn’t even realize I […]

Murder at an Irish Wedding has too many annoying cozy clichés

Murder at an Irish Wedding by Carlene O'Connor

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Murder at an Irish Wedding is the second book in the Irish Village Mystery series. I absolutely loved the first book, Murder in an Irish Village, when I read it a few years ago. I wanted to continue the series but my local library only had the subsequent novels as mass market paperbacks. I have lupus and its most enduring gift is perpetual hand pain, so I simply can’t hand open mass market paperbacks. Anyway, I was thrilled to discover the entire Irish Village Mystery […]

A Gut-Churning Good Time

The Royal Art of Poison: Filthy Palaces, Fatal Cosmetics, Deadly Medicine, and Murder Most Foul by Eleanor Herman

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What a ride! Big thanks to badkittyuno for putting this gem on my radar. Or, in the parlance of this book, allowing me to seek of the poisons of this tome via unicorn horn. We, as humans, have done some pretty vile things to ourselves and others since…pretty much the dawn of time. The Royal Art of Poison illustrates-in graphic detail- the poisonous things that people (mostly royalty, but the common man is capable of critical nastiness as well) have been doing intentionally and accidentally to […]

The Silent Patient is a good book but I didn’t like it

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

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This is a hard book for me to rate because it was fascinating and compelling but I didn’t like it.  Alicia Berenson hasn’t spoken since she murdered her husband six years earlier. To outsiders, they seemed to have a perfect marriage. She was a beautiful, successful painter, and he was a handsome, famous photographer. They were madly in love. So why did she shoot him in the face 5 times?  Theo Faber has recently joined the Grove as its new psychotherapist. Part of why he […]

A Serviceable Mystery

Case Histories by Kate Atkinson

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I love a good mystery. I can tear through an absorbing mystery in a day, but I slow down for certain mysteries because of the depth of the characters.  While Case Histories moves at a decent clip, the characters are sketched with more mannerisms and exposition than depth. To her credit, though, author Kate Atkinson is quite good at portraying the many forms of grief and loss. While I did not find this mystery very satisfying in the end, I do appreciate the effort that went in […]

The Haunting of Rookward House is my new favorite Darcy Coates novel

The Haunting of Rookward House by Darcy Coates

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The Haunting of Rookward House is a creepy horror novel and it’s the first book in a while to actually scare me. Main character Guy is down on luck. He’s living with his mom and unable to find a job. While helping Mom clean out the attic, he discovers the deed to Rookward House, which Mom doesn’t really remember inheriting. Mom seems a bit ditsy. Guy immediately decides that selling Rookward House is the answer to their problems as it will give them enough money […]



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