Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“I suspect if I had owned a border collie, this story would have a very different ending, and I probably would not have been around to type it up. But I had Bongo, and he saved our lives because he is simple and made of nose.”

The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher

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Gotta write this review today because I’m about to start The Hollow Places, and I don’t want my brain to get to confused about it. This book was ooky spooky and I enjoyed it very much. The atmosphere was A+ for me, the MC alone in her evil grandmother’s hoarder house (the book is clear that her being a hoarder is in no way related to her being evil, but the doll room is def related) and a THING in the woods. The THING omg it […]

Hi, it’s me, the worst book of the year.

Whalefall by Daniel Kraus

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I’m not mad just disappointed. Just kidding, I’m pretty mad. I’m going to say what many reviewers have said before me: This is not a book about a man who is swallowed by a whale and has to use science to get out alive. This is a book about a man (a teenager, actually, but more on that below) who has daddy issues real bad, and he happens to be swallowed by a whale also. The parts with the whale are few and far between—it […]

A trippy, atmospheric sci-fi haunted house.

Rose/House by Arkady Martine

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“I am Rose House, entire, and have never been anything else. I am not lonely. I do not wish to be a companion of elsewheres.” This was so atmospheric and a pleasure to read, even though I’m pretty sure I didn’t understand half of what was going on. The main conceit here is that this is a sci-fi take on a haunted house, where the haunt is an A.I. that IS the house, not that inhabits the house or was installed there, but is in […]

This never quite came together for me, but it was interesting along the way.

Flux by Jinwoo Chong

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This is an interesting book that is ultimately not really for me, though it has some things going on that made me glad I read it. Even though it left me unsatisfied and mostly puzzled as to what the point was, I never wanted to stop reading (listening) to it, and I was fully engaged the whole time, which is not something you can say for a lot of three-star books. I put off writing this review very much on purpose because I was hoping […]

The first book in an intimidatingly long series about nerdy, silly, time-travel historians, with a surprising amount of angst and drama.

Just One Damned Thing After Another (The Chronicles of St. Mary's, #1) by Jodi Taylor

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“If this was one of those books, there would now be three pages of head-banging sex. The reality was that he pulled me close, whispered, ‘Mfhbnnntx,’ and I pulled his arm over me like a cover and muttered, ‘Trout,’ and that was pretty much it.” This was a lot better than I thought it would be! (I’ve seen quite a few negative or lukewarm reviews.) I had fun with it. This strange little book is one that only could have come from the bonkers ground […]

A surprise favorite of 2023!

Black Sheep by Rachel Harrison

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Thanks to NetGalley and Berkley for the ARC. It hasn’t affected the content of my review. Okay, but wow. So straight up it’s impossible to talk about this book in any depth without giving out information that should be preserved for the reading experience. As spoiler-free as possible is the best way to go into this one. But generally, and this is as far as the synopsis goes, Vesper Wright left her strict religious community six years before the book starts, when she was almost […]



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