Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Ugh

A Simple Favor by Darcy Bell

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I wanted to like this book. I haven’t seen the movie, but reviews of the film made it sound campy and fun. I’m usually too wimpy to watch thrillers but I do enjoy reading them, so I thought I’d try the book instead. I have never encountered a protagonist I found more off-putting than Stephanie. I know that the author was intending this to some extent, but the other narrative voices are not much better. I certainly don’t think that an unlikable narrator is such […]

Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew’d – Precocious Mystery Fun Times

Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew'd by Alan Bradley

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This Alan Bradley series is one of my favorites to recommend to others. Light and fluffy I describe the protagonist as a young and plucky Jessica Fletcher, a la TV’s “Murder She Wrote.” At this point Flavia is a pre-teen and still using her smarts to solve murders in her village, and I find these books, and her, delightful. This is the 8th installment and it’s been over a year since I read the 7th. As murder mysteries go, they have become a little predictable, […]

I Don’t Know How Anyone Calls This Suspenseful

The Doll House by Phoebe Morgan

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  I guess this is another one of those books where I am apparently too picky.  It got many great reviews on Amazon and Goodreads alike with buzzwords like, “Thrilling!” “Tense” “Suspenseful!” and “Keeps You Guessing Until the End!” None of those things are true from my reading experience.  At all.  Ok, maybe it was a little tense…but not really. (To me) it was not thrilling, suspenseful nor did it keep me guessing until the end, in fact, I figured out the whole situation out […]

Marry Groundhog Day With Clue and Quantum Leap…and then do weird stuff

The 7 and 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

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Aiden wakes up not knowing who he is or where he is…he’s told three rules: Evelyn Hardcastle will be murdered at 11 pm. There are eight days and eight witnesses that Aiden will physically inhabit in order to find clues. He can only leave Blackheath House once he can tell “them” who killed Evelyn Hardcastle. This book sounds amazing, right?!? And it was recommended by a person whom I really like and admire her taste in books so I was excited to read it and […]

Outlander meets Criminal Minds

A Murder in Time by Julie McElwain

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When brilliant FBI agent Kendra Donovan stumbles back in time and finds herself in a 19th century English castle under threat from a vicious serial killer, she scrambles to solve the case before it takes her life—200 years before she was even born. This was certainly not a book to take seriously – think of a wallpaper historical novel with a modern day heroine who just doesn’t fit in, nor does she seem to care to.  Kendra Donovan is supposedly a child prodigy; she went […]

Under the Bridge

The Underbelly by Gary Phillips

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Because the hardboiled genre has become so mainstream, many forget it has its roots in anti-establishmentarianism. Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest is on some level a mea culpa for his time as a strike-busting Pinkerton agent. Raymond Chandler’s Marlowe frequently made an enemy of the local police, whom he never trusted. His last short story functioned as a screed against the American healthcare system. Gary Phillips’ The Underbelly may be seen as a unique take on the genre: a homeless PI maneuvering through the impoverished of LA trying to unravel the conspiracy […]



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