Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A Brit among the cactuses.

Did You See Melody? by Sophie Hannah

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I’m posting my review featuring the British version of the book, which has the original (and MUCH better) title of Did You See Melody? rather than the sanitized and bland as hell US version of Keep Her Safe. YAWN. What were you thinking, US publisher? This is one that’s been on my shelves since spring 2018 when Sophie Hannah came to the Tucson Festival of Books as part of promoting it, and I got to escort her around campus. I’d never read any of her […]

This was . . . weird.

Little Face (Spilling CID, #1) by Sophie Hannah

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Well, this was an experience. Disappointing, kind of bonkers, somehow still readable, lots of plot holes. It felt good to clean it off my TBR, and I’ll probably continue the series just because I’m curious about the bizarre relationship between the two detectives, but boy was it not what I was expecting. The premise of this book is a good one, one that I don’t think it really delivers on: a woman leaves her house for the first time since her two week old baby […]

Please Send Help

The Next to Die by Sophie Hannah

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Bingo: Reader’s Choice, replacing the Roaring 20s square Everyone makes mistakes, but I now have to spend my Sunday night grappling with the fact that I chose to read this book of my own free will. I am not okay. It seems like the general consensus is that Sophie Hannah’s first few Spilling CID mysteries were okay–at least worth reading if you like that sort of thing. I certainly did–I remember tearing through the first three or four. I kept reading after that, even with […]

Sophie Hannah can always be counted on for a solid 3 stars

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I have read so many Sophie Hannah books, and outside the Spilling CID novels (which tend to be pretty good), not one of her one-off novels has been great. But — they don’t quite suck either. And they’re usually an easy, one evening read. Cara Burrows has “fled” her perfectly nice husband and their two children in England to spend two weeks at a resort in Arizona. She has her reasons, but really, they’re pretty shitty. While at the resort, she wanders into the wrong […]

Recent Reads: A Summer of (Mostly) Thrillers

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I have been really busy with my own writing and art project this year, so haven’t been posting regularly on my blog. But I did want to share some capsule book reviews of what I’ve been reading lately. Agatha Christie, The Monogram Murders – billed as a “new” Hercule Poirot mystery, by British mystery author Sophie Hannah. It wasn’t a bad read, but was it Poirot? For fans of Christie’s most famous and famously fastidious detective, there were definite pleasant notes scored, with nods to […]

The Book Within the Book

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Man, this is one strange little book. I picked it up because I was going on vacation, and even when Sophie Hannah’s books aren’t very good, they can always be relied on to be interesting. The basic plot of this one is that the Merrison family has picked up and left London for a more peaceful life in Devon. The main character, Justine Merrison, has quit her job and is looking forward to staying home. The story gets going when she finds the beginning of […]



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