Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Pop, six, squish, uh-uh, Cicero, Lipschitz

My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

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I had been looking forward to this novel since I read the first reviews several months ago and it did not disappoint. What a fantastic debut! The novel opens with Korede getting a phone call from her sister. Her boyfriend is dead, and she needs help cleaning up. And it’s not the first time Korede has gotten this kind of call from her younger sister Ayoola. This novel is fun, dark and a very quick and enjoyable read. It’s the story of an older sister […]

Truly one of my white whales. #CBRBingo

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Project: Catch Up On Review Backlog, review #6 out of 11 The Alienist has been on my TBR practically since I joined Goodreads ten years ago. I no longer remember whose review or what list prompted me to add this book. (But thank you, whoever you were! I really liked it!) I had this book on my TBR so long that it almost didn’t make it through several TBR purges. I distinctly remember being on the verge of deleting it at least twice, and then […]

‘Are we talking about one body or two?’ Nilson replied, ‘Fifteen or sixteen, since 1978.’

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In February 1983, the residents of 23 Cranley Gardens in Muswell Hill started having problems with their drains. Calling out a plumber, the blockage would turn out to be much, much worse than the usual toilet blockages, as well as accounting for the terrible smell that had been permeating the house for some time. The resident in the attic flat had been flushing human flesh. Quickly arrested, Dennis Nilsen was extremely forthcoming with the police. As well as immediately copping to having bodies hid in […]

I’ve seen the future, brother. It is murder.

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As anyone with even the vaguest idea of my reading habits will have noticed, I’m fascinated by true crime – and serial killers in particular. I can’t tell you why that is (although I’ve read lots of theories about why women, and in particular women with anxiety, are so drawn to the subject), but what I can tell you is that Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters is an excellent book on the history of serial killing, the psychopathology of these types of […]

Deeply disturbing and graphically violent

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As per the blurb:  Karin Slaughter returns with a sophisticated and chilling psychological thriller of dangerous secrets, cold vengeance, and unexpected absolution, in which two estranged sisters must come together to find truth about two harrowing tragedies, twenty years apart, that devastate their lives. This was a deeply disturbing book – well written, with great attention to plot and detail, but overall disturbing.  I would warn anyone thinking of reading this that it contains highly graphic violence to women, with scenes of torture and rape […]

You Keep Telling Yourself That, Pal…

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John Wayne Cleaver has some (most) indicators that he’ll probably be a serial killer one day: The superficial/not actual indicators:  His middle name is Wayne, his dad is named Sam (which makes him the Son of Sam), his last name’s Cleaver, he’s obsessed with serial killers. The real:  The “triad”–bedwetting, animal cruelty, and a compunction towards arson.  Oh yeah, and he’s a sociopath. But as much as John studies serial killers, he keeps telling us and his therapist that he’s studying them so that he […]



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