Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

City of Sisterly Love

Long Bright River by Liz Moore

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Parts of this one hit me hard. I’ve lost multiple high school classmates to drugs/opioids. It’s painful. I don’t even really have the words to express some of the sorrow I’ve felt over lives lost. I never looked at my old neighborhood as a place to escape. I was happy there growing up. But times change. At the heart of the book, this is a story of two sisters who take divergent paths. Those kinds of tales usually aren’t my thing, writers often rely too […]

Kidnappings, murders and snooping around in a high-class brothel

A Murderous Relation by Deanna Raybourn

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This is the fifth book in the Veronica Speedwell series. There will absolutely be spoilers for some of the previous books in the series. Skip this review if you’re not up to date. It’s an excellent series; if you want to start at the beginning, pick up A Curious Beginning.  Official description: Veronica Speedwell and her natural historian colleague Stoker are asked by Lady Wellingtonia Beauclerk to help with a potential scandal so explosive it threatens to rock the monarchy. Prince Albert Victor is a regular visitor to […]

Gone and Forgotten

Have You Seen Me? by Kate White

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Slowly but surely, and of course, unhealthily, we begin to emerge from isolation due to the pandemic. I doubt I’ll be keeping up my book-every-one-or-two-days ratio until the inevitable second wave. So I’m beginning to cast aside the stack of stuff I was going to read to pass the time. This is probably the last one. I got it off one recommendation or another, can’t even remember now where it was. And that seems kind of appropriate because I finished this last night and I’m […]

Not for kids, seriously. Do not mistake this for YA

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

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Official book description: Galaxy “Alex” Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. By age twenty, in fact, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she’s thrown her life away. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of […]

The Faint of Heart

The Innocents by Ace Atkins

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Ace Atkins’ Quinn Colson series has helped me get through the pandemic. I’ve read books 2-6 since covid broke out across the country. They’re easy, gritty southern crime tales that don’t patronize the audience nor do they often give into the familiar tropes of post-western Tough Guy fic. I had this one on the shelf for weeks but I kept putting it off for a very obvious reason: it’s just tough to read about law enforcement right now. Don’t get me wrong, I read plenty […]

Completely unlikeable characters ruin a great premise

An Unwanted Stranger by Shari Lapena

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An Unwanted Guest is a closed door mystery involving a group of strangers trapped at a luxury hotel during an ice storm. I may have squeed with excitement when I read that description. Sadly, that was the only time this book delighted me.  Mitchell’s Inn in the Catskills Mountains is a gorgeous hotel, deep in the woods, with no cell phone service or internet. Guests enjoy gourmet meals, unlimited alcohol, and outdoor activities such as cross-country skiing and snowshoeing. Three couples, a pair of friends, […]



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