Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

If You Mixed The Andromeda Strain and Pacific Rim, You’d Get This

Cold Storage by David Koepp

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It took me a while to get this whole reading thing going again, and I figured what would finally jumpstart it would be a good old goofy disease thriller. Folks, I was not wrong. According to my e-reader’s stats, it took me a little over five hours to finish this book, and that seems about right. The plot starts out very similar to Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain: Some kind of organism has hitched a ride back to earth after getting mutated in space and has […]

A ghost story, almost-horror-novel-but-not, for people who don’t really like ghost stories or horror. And people who do!

The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James

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I don’t normally do ghost stories, but I recently joined Book of the Month, and this was the only one of January’s books that seemed like something I might really like, so I ordered it. Plus it was also being touted as a mystery and a thriller, it fit well with my January theme of reading books by and about badass ladies (double check on that here) and with my run of books about shitty men doing bad things to women and girls. Also it’s […]

Good buildup, letdown resolution, mediocre characterization

A Madness of Sunshine by Nalini Singh

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Romance and thriller combine in this quick read set in New Zealand. The writing is evocative of its setting; I could imagine the steep cliffs, pounding ocean, and dense forest. However, the characterization was deeply clichéd – tough (but beautiful!) woman with hard past meets tough cop with hard past. Most of the secondary characters were one dimensional. In particular, the missing girl was ecstatically described as beautiful and lively multiple times throughout the novel. In fact, every time she is mentioned, the reader is […]

The Slowest Thriller Ever Written

A Fatal Inversion by Barbara Vine

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A long time horror fan, I stumbled my way into thrillers and suspense last year, and became quite hooked. The anxious feelings, wondering what was lurking in a dark hallway (or on the next page), was chilling and delightful. The comparative lack of blood and guts, of which I have become less a fan, also delightful. So as my algorithm in Amazon updated to suggest more suspense, and I signed up for a newsletter or three dedicated to the thrill and suspense genre, Barbara Vine’s […]

Harrowing

Bird Box by Josh Malerman

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Technically, I finished this book about an hour before the calendar ticked over to 2020, but it still counts to CBR12! The fact that I was reading that late on NYE gives you an insight into the intensity of this book. I simply couldn’t put it down as it reached it’s crescendo. Bird Box is a psychological paranormal thriller about the end of the world, told through the eyes and ears of Malorie – a women holding it all together for the sake of those […]

The First Rule…

The Kill Club by Wendy Heard

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The internet giveth and taketh away. It’s hard to tell sometimes if it’s a net positive, (more often than not, I would lean on the side of “no”) but it also helps one learn and discover things they wouldn’t otherwise be able to find on their own. Take for example Wendy Heard. I wasn’t aware of her previous work, nor am I especially well-versed with the work of queer women in crime fiction. Fortunately for me, I found online a handy guide written by her […]



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