Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Maybe I was right. We’re not normal people. We are monsters. But if we’re monsters, we’ll thrive in the dark. Together.”

Butcher & Blackbird by Brynne Weaver

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The first book in the Ruinous Love Trilogy came to my attention thanks to my fellow Cannonballers. I feel like I went from knowing absolutely nothing about this book or its author to being flooded with information about it and somehow still managing to go into the reading experience with extraordinarily little spoiled for me (something I hope to accomplish with my own review). Malin’s review from March was the linchpin as I don’t traditionally go in for dark romance but if Malin gave it her […]

“Women were built to endure the rules men make.”

The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff

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I would think it a real challenge to make a story about women suffering under abusive husbands and the difficulties of living in the caste system in India incredibly funny, but this book managed to do that. The humor is dark, but the characters (mostly women) are authentic, interesting and very relatable as they try to navigate the world of men while finding ways to advocate for themselves in a world that doesn’t want them to do much at all. Geeta’s awful husband disappeared 5 […]

“I jumped to a conclusion that was so wrong, it was almost completely right.”

The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware

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The journey to me reading this book was a funny one. I accompanied my husband to a birthday party for a classmate, which was held at said classmate’s childhood friend’s apartment. At said party, I got to talking about books with the partner of the childhood friend, as you do when you don’t know anyone at a party but you see a good-looking bookshelf, and then they, a complete stranger, loaned me this book. Because let’s be real: book people are the BEST people. I’d […]

Game, set and …

The Match by Harlan Coben

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Several decades ago, a young boy was discovered living alone in the woods. The boy was put in foster care; the authorities assumed the boy would eventually be claimed. But no such thing happened. The boy, nicknamed Wilde, grew up and became a… PI? Enforcer? Jack of All Trades in the security business? We don’t know, we don’t care. All we know is that the boy’s memories never came back, save for one: a red banister, a portrait of a man, and the sound of […]

“Everyone who dies is alive. We call people “dead” because we need a word for it, but “dead” just means that time has stopped moving forward for that person? You understand? No one dies, not really.”

The Last Devil to Die by Richard Osman

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I LOVE THIS BOOK AND BOOK SERIES AND YOU SHOULD READ IT. Yup. All caps. Yelling right out of the gate. I mean serious business. This joy is not a drill! This book is the fourth in the series, so if you haven’t read The Thursday Murder Club you should begin at the beginning and prepare to nearly swoon with delight in each installment. Osman has created a quartet of characters that I cannot wait to visit when I finally travel to England, because duh […]

A Lineage of Madness

The Noh Mask Mystery by Akimitsu Takagi

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An aspiring mystery writer and his childhood friend must join forces to solve the mystery of a string of deaths in a prominent Japanese family that may be the result of an inherited curse. I’ve always enjoyed reading works in translation – they seem to bring you closer to the place in which they are set – but I definitely haven’t read many genre works. As such, I was intrigued by the prospect of this locked room murder mystery, written in 1949 but never before […]



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