Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

It took all the strength I had not to fall apart!

I Am Still Alive by Kate Alice Marshall

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I’m really sorry for naming this review after the most cliche song I could have quoted — OR AM I? Sixteen-year-old Jess has been through it this year.  She survived a terrible car crash that killed her mother on impact. She’s left scarred and her leg is irrevocably damaged, despite the diligence she has devoted to her physical therapy. And now, the court has ordered her custody to the father she has barely known, transported there by an old family friend named Gil. Gil does […]

Accessible, exciting historical fiction for the tween set

Lifeboat 12 by Susan Hood

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Almost accidentally, author Susan Hood stumbled upon a historical event that has gone mostly overlooked and it is the basis of her exciting middle grade novel Lifeboat 12.  The book is told in verse format by narrator and actual survivor Ken Sparks, who is thirteen years of age right before London is destroyed in the Blitz. His life in London is troubled by things large in scope (like running to bomb shelters nightly when the alarms go off and living off rations and hand-me-downs) and […]

Here There Be Giant Catfish Monsters

A World Below by Wesley King

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When Mr. Baker takes his sixth grade class to the Carslbad Caverns for their end of year field-trip, he assures them they’ll find awe and adventure. Turns out they find a little too much of both. Wandering the cavern’s depths, they get caught in an earthquake that sends them deeper underground and the students find themselves split up, teacherless, and lost in the middle of the earth. As they try to find their way back, they will encounter unrecognizable wildlife, conquer their own fears, and […]

Zoey is strong, tough, and super stubborn

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This is Book one of “The Dominion Trilogy”.  All three books in the trilogy were available on Kindle Unlimited, so I downloaded all three and started at one! We open the story by meeting Zoey.  She has no last name, and we find out quickly that she’s nearly 21.  She lives in some sort of facility that is very strict.  Throughout the story, we learn that she doesn’t know her parents, she doesn’t have any siblings, and she’s with other girls in the same boat. […]

You are entering the Red Zone. Proceed at own risk. When in doubt, run.

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I consider myself very lucky that I discovered Justin Cronin’s “The Passage” series only last summer, so the wait for City of Mirrors was much less painful and dramatic than it would have been if I’d been reading in real time: The Passage was published in 2010 and The Twelve in 2012. City of Mirrors came out four weeks ago. That’s not on a George R. R. Martin level, but still could have been a brutal wait for me. Whew! I love this series. I […]

You will not be spared the horrors, even from the comfort of solid ground.

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I’ve been meaning to read this book for a long time, and the impending release of Ron Howard’s adaptation spurred me to finally pick it up. It’s one of the better reading choices I’ve made this year. For the uninitiated, the Essex was a whaling ship that was sunk in 1820 roughly halfway between Hawaii and the coast of Peru; almost as far from land as you can be and still consider yourself terrestrial. The ship was attacked by a sperm whale, which ultimately inspired […]



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