Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

It’s a Wonderful Life (Now With Books!)

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

by Leave a Comment

CW: suicide, suicidal ideation This was an interesting premise but has some deep (spoiler-y) flaws in the magical element that make it hard to get behind it from an entirely logical perspective. The not-spoiler part (available as part of book’s blurb): sometimes, instead of dying, you end up in a midway point which, for our protagonist, takes the form of an endless library in which it is always midnight and which is librarian’d by her old middle school librarian. You can read any of the […]

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad…House

It Will Just Be Us by Jo Kaplan

by Leave a Comment

A knock at the door. A series of frantic knocks at the door. Yes, It Will Just Be Us  nearly starts with “it was a dark and stormy night”. Our narrator, Sam, is a down-and-out adjunct professor of archeology barely hanging onto her sanity. After a series of upsetting events, we find her moving back to her crumbling, ancestral mansion in on the edge of a foreboding Virginia swamp. The mansion is, for all intents and purposes, haunted. It’s haunted by the living specter of her […]

Bodies Hit The Floor

Killing Williamsburg by Bradley Spinelli

by Leave a Comment

A big ol’ content warning: this book is about suicide. Suicide is on almost every page. The book itself includes graphic depictions of suicide and bodies in a post-mortem state as a result of suicide. Though I won’t go into detail myself, there’s no way to avoid talking about suicide in this review. If you are triggered by suicide or have a history with suicidal ideation, please skip both this book and this review. … Along with Colson Whitehead’s Zone One, this is another New York […]

What is happening?

The House We Grew Up In by Lisa Jewell

by Leave a Comment

I’m not even sure where to start with this one. Typically, I would summarize the plot, but I’m not sure I know what happened. I may have fallen asleep and missed something, but I’ll give it a whirl – A quirky family of six live in a house. Their family seems to revolve around their Easter celebration, until one year, tragedy strikes. Mother and Father divorce. They split the house in two and Father moves next door. Mother invites her girlfriend and her child to […]

I’m sorry. I can’t. Don’t hate me.

by Leave a Comment

CBR10Bingo: Dream Vacation (BINGO!) Emily X.R. Pan’s The Astonishing Colour of After begins with teenager Leigh recounting the day her mother died from suicide, leaving a crumpled note in the trash with a crossed out message: “I want you to remember.” Soon after, a mysterious red bird leaves a gift for Leigh: a package filled with mementos of her mother. Leigh convinces her father to take her to Taiwan for the first time to meet her mother’s estranged family, secretly hoping she’ll also be able […]

Same old Sedaris, now with added feels

by 2 Comments

For several years now, I’ve refused to buy hardcover books. I don’t like the added expense, of course, but mostly, I just don’t like the extra bulk and really don’t like how they feel in my hand: too much like textbooks or hymnals. I don’t need to be reminded of either when I’m trying to read something fun. As a result, I’m consistently a year or two behind everyone else with my reading, a (discount) price I’m willing to pay.   David Sedaris has long […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo