Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Don’t leave me hanging

York: The Shadow Cipher by Laura Ruby

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3.5 stars. This probably would have been 4 stars for me if it had come to a somewhat satisfying conclusion instead of a brutal cliffhanger. It’s a major pet peeve of mine when authors don’t make books in series, especially the first in a series, have a bit of closure so you feel like you’ve read something that feels halfway complete. It’s ok to make your readers want more, I just really hate feeling like I have to go on to the next book to […]

My Kind of Town, Chicago is…

In A Pig's Eye by Robert Campbell

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In a time before both Amazon and GoodReads reviews became omnipresent, a person would pick something off the shelf because it interested them. They didn’t cross consult a third party to see if it would be worth their time, they just grabbed it and hoped for the best. I confess that I sometimes miss living in the stone age. I took a chance on this one after seeing it for $3 in the discount section at my favorite bookstore: The Mysterious in lower Manhattan. Rarely […]

Flow was Up and Down and the Beginning Was Boring

Telling Tales by Ann Cleeves

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Not too much to say about this one. It was fine. I was bored though for the first 1/3 until we get Vera interacting with characters. Any time Cleeves away from her I found myself bored. The ending was very good though and a surprise. I liked how it was wrapped up. “Telling Tales” takes a very long time to get moving. We start off with a young housewife, Emma Bennett who sits around having fantasies about the local potter, Dan. Things change one day […]

Epic Rant–Spoilers

Buried Prey by John Sandford

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So I can’t talk about this book without spoilers. That’s how freaking annoyed I am. I may just give up reading anymore books in this series or ensuring they are library borrows. Lucas is not the end all be all for women everywhere. The fact that Sandford cheapens Marcy’s death by forgetting her backstory and having her thinking about Lucas in a someday romantic style made me heave. And then of course everyone is not focused on Marcy. Oh hell no, everyone must be focused […]

Davenport’s Family is in Danger Again

Stormy Prey by John Sandford

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Honestly not too much to say about this. The POVs with the bad guys in this one don’t work. It was good to get more of Weather’s POV though and I realize it’s been a while since Sandford had her actually part of the story besides going to work and getting Lucas out of his bad moods. Other than that though, this book really doesn’t work. The bad guys are some of the stupidest people ever. The fixation on killing Weather makes zero sense. And […]

Where Brooklyn At.

Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem

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I don’t know what it’s like to have Tourette’s Syndrome, nor do I know the specifics of how it manifests in human behavior. As far as I know, neither does Jonathan Lethem. There is a troubling history of able bodied people using illnesses and non-ableness to become magical healers and special problem solvers. So maybe this book is complete trash because Jonathan Lethem gets those aspects wrong. But from an ignorant perspective, I liked this one. And I liked it not because he had Tourette’s […]



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