Hurricane by Jason Chin
Hurricane by Jason Chin (due May 2025; read via an online reader copy) is exactly what you think it is. It is about hurricanes. Now, as an adult, I thought I knew a few things about it, but this really gets into everything on an introduction level and makes it fun to read. Even if you do know a little, this can expand that knowledge. Granted, it is all facts and very minimal in an actual story arc, so it can be dry, but it […]
Blanche On The Lam by Barbara Neely
There’s a sort of condescension glommed onto the (mostly white) marketers of Black creatives which holds that some sort of fictional media by them with themes of racial prejudice blocking the hero’s path makes it the next Get Out. Get Out‘s a great movie that deserves its laudations but Black writers have been using genres to address the racism they feel for a long time. Barbara Neely does that here. Strip it of its context and it’s a cozy mystery: a maid solving a small […]
Miss Mary Reporting: The True Story of Sportswriter Mary Garber by Sue Macy
This is BlackRaven reporting on Miss Mary Reporting: The True Story of Sportswriter Mary Garber by Sue Macy and illustrated by C. F. Payne. And I would like to say READ THIS BOOK! Okay, so you might want to know why. And the why is Because I said so! And it is a good book about a woman in sports that we do not know of and is (in my not so humble opinion) more important than the sports players themselves. Because if Mary Garber […]
Step It up and Go: The Story of North Carolina Popular Music by David Menconi
I heard about this book on a fan page for the Avett Brothers, and since I love music almost as much as reading, it seemed like something to check out. Menconi was a music reporter for the Raleigh News and Observer for many years, and the book reflects his deep connections to the community. It’s structured by time and genre- each chapter deals with a different location and type of music. North Carolina is often overlooked in the music scene, but it turns out to […]
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
I know that this is turning into a ‘love it or hate it’ type book (even amongst the Cannonball reviews), but I personally really enjoyed it. We are introduced to Kya, a girl living in the marshes of North Carolina in the 60s. Her dysfunctional family lives a secluded life away from town, subject to poverty and her father’s drunken abuse. One by one her mother and siblings flee, leaving Kya alone with her volatile father, until one day, he too disappears. Kya becomes known […]
I picked this up from the library after browsing some old CBR reviews for inspiration. The story circles around two women in Mullaby, North Carolina: 17-year-old Emily Benedict, who comes to Mullaby to live with her extremely tall grandfather after the death of her mother Dulcie, and her 34-year-old neighbor, Julia Winterson, who has returned to Mullaby to run her father’s BBQ joint for a few years after his death. Emily quickly realizes that her mother’s legacy in Mullaby is actually pretty scandalous, and she tries […]
