Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

I remember the Russians

Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith

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Cbr12bingo Nostalgia This book, set in late the 1970s Soviet Union and published in 1981, marks the time of my teenaged years, a time when my personal interest in the Russians began to grow (leading to a long stint in graduate school and a PhD in Russian/Soviet history). Gorky Park was made into a movie (which I never saw) and Martin Cruz Smith went on to write a number of Arkady Renko detective/thriller novels. I think I might have read one of them (Red Square) […]

A twisty psychological thriller. #CBRBingo – No Money!

His & Hers by Alice Feeney

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NB: I received a free ARC of HIS & HERS by Alice Feeney from Macmillan in an exchange for an honest review. I’m somewhat at a loss as to what to say about this book. I was given an ARC by the publisher back in February, but it never arrived because I’d moved, and the USPS doesn’t forward packages, apparently. So they kindly sent me an e-book ARC instead, and that was a disaster. I know me and I should have said no, because it’s […]

The Law School Scam, with a side of beaches

The Rooster Bar by John Grisham

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John Grisham’s 25th legal thriller centers on three law students, Todd, Mark and Lola, who are about to enter their final semester. Unfortunately, their law school, Foggy Bottom, is a bottom tier school charging top tier prices, and once they graduate into a saturated market their degrees may be nearly worthless while their debt will be astronomical.  When a shared personal tragedy causes them to rethink their life choices, they abandon their plan to graduate for one of assumed identities and ‘unauthorized legal practice’ in […]

I hated it so much

Prior Bad Acts by Tami Hoag

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If you subscribe to the Tucker Carlson school of policing, this is a thriller for you.  For everyone else, I would advise looking elsewhere for better written characters, less clichés and a more nuanced view of law and order in Minneapolis. The action opens with our soon to be damsel in distress, Minneapolis Judge Carey Moore, making a private chambers decision to prevent evidence of ‘prior bad acts’ being introduced into a murder trial she is presiding over.  Hoag’s villain, a loner with a fetish […]

I’m glad I don’t have kids because this book would have given me nightmares

The Whisper Man by Alex North

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Tom Kennedy and his young son, Jake, arrive home one day to find Tom’s wife dead at the bottom of the stairs. Tom is trying his best to be a good father, but he feels like it doesn’t come naturally to him, and he and Jake don’t have the connection Jake had with his mother. After months of Jake refusing to go up and down the stairs, Tom buys a new house in the nearby village of Featherbank.  But moving isn’t the easy solution they […]

A good book but not what I expected or wanted

Final Girls by Riley Sager

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Quinn Carpenter is the only survivor of the Pine Cottage massacre. She has no memory of the massacre, but she knows a knife-wielding maniac murdered her closest friends and stabbed her three times. She only survived because she ran into a police officer while the killer was chasing her.  Shortly after the incident, another Final Girl, Lisa, reached out to Quinn to teach her how to handle the aftermath. Lisa wanted her and Quinn to meet Sam, another Final Girl. She thought they could support […]



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