Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“But not everyone has dreams. Some people just are, the way that trees and rocks and rivers are just there without a reason, the rest of the world moving around them.”

Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng by Kylie Lee Baker

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CBR17 Bingo: Citizen – Though Cora is a citizen of the United States, her race – as well as the race of the many murdered Asian women in this book – makes everyone around them perceive them as foreigners to the point that they are stripped of the safety that their citizenships were supposed to have given them. Cora works as a crime scene cleaner during the COVID-19 pandemic – after witnessing her sister pushed in front of a train, the gore doesn’t bother her anymore. […]

When the skeptic becomes borderline unlikable

I’ll Be Waiting by Kelley Armstrong

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Bingo Square: Border (with seances and Ouija boards, it’s the boundaries/borders between life and the afterlife/supernatural) This one was a bit of a miss for me for Kelley Armstrong – I really loved her Women of the Otherworld series, and in general, her other novels, whether supernatural or romance, tend to work for me. This specific novel is one of the supernatural/paranormal ones – the main character and narrator is Nic, a new widow after her husband Anton died in a car crash less than […]

The island might be unspoiled but some of its residents really stink…

Summer Shadows by John Harris Dunning, Ricardo Cabral, Brad Simpson and Jim Campbell

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The cover of Summer Shadows by John Harris Dunning, Ricardo Cabral, Brad Simpson and Jim Campbell is a tad misleading. It makes things look like a teen thriller in the line of a slightly darker Christopher Pike, RL Stine, or Richie Tankersley Cusick and the like. In other words, something from the late 1980s or early 1990s when I was a teen and actually reading realistic paranormal.  Instead of a “teeny bopper thriller with supernatural” we get sex, drugs, and vampires. We get some downright […]

“The Caravan of life is moving by, Quick! to your places in the passing show.”

Caravan by Dorothy Gilman

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CBR17 Bingo: Culture – Caressa encounters and immerses herself in multiple cultures during her wanderings through the Sahara, including the Tuareg and the Hausa. By the age of sixteen Caressa has been a carnie, a Boston schoolgirl, and the wife of an anthropologist – but in her years in the Sahara desert, she will go on to become a widow, a sorceress, a slave, and much more. The trouble with this book is that the description is rather misleading. There’s a little magic, and a […]

Works of Pimienta

Twin Cities by Jose Pimienta

Stars, Hide Your Fire by Kel McDonald

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Somewhere I have a copy of the book, Twin Cities by Joe Pimienta. Do I know where it is? Not a chance! Books have a habit of finding safe spots that are so safe even I don’t know where they are! Therefore, thank goodness for my local library.  I’m thinking that two readings for adults would be a good idea. First, read the text then second, read the illustrations. Trying to do both at the same time is a little hard. You see, this might […]

“My passengers. I decide, then and there, to love them. I’ve never loved before. Love is not a standard component of my programming. ” CBRBINGO – ‘O’

Of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove

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Thanks to NetGalley, Dreamscape Media & Dreamscape Lore, Bindery Books, and Ezeekat Press for the ARC. It hasn’t affected the contents of my review. I had a great time with this weird little genre-bender. I love books where the author was like, should I do mystery? Romance? Paranormal? Horror? Sci-fi? Why not all?? Indeed. Why not all. Our two main characters are ship’s AI’s, the navigator, and the ship’s doctor. Demeter is the ship’s name, and when the book starts she’s just a normal ship, […]



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