Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

An Impressive Heroine, All the More So Seeing As She Is Still in Middle School

We Begin at the End by Chris Whitaker

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In a small town along the cliffs of northern California, a young girl has disappeared.  Walk and his best friend, Vincent, are both teens and join in the search.  Walk wants to join the police force, like his dad, and when the girl’s body is found along the roadside, he forces himself to give evidence that implicates Vincent.  Vincent ends up in prison and after killing a man in a prison fight, ends up there for thirty years.  Walk does what he can to stay […]

The Last House on Needless Street Explores the Monster Inside Each of Us

The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward

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In the boarded up house at the end of Needless Street lives a man named Ted who drinks too much and loses time, a house cat named Olivia who sees it as her job to look after him, and his precocious daughter Lauren who never goes outside – not after what happened last time. Ted’s main hobbies are feeding the myriad songbirds who visit the backyard, and playing all the different games that Lauren makes up. That is, at least, until a murderer arrives on […]

This duology will rock you!

Godly Heathens by H. E. Edgmon

Merciless Saviors by H. E. Edgmon

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I read HE Edgmon’s debut, The Witch King and immediately knew he was an author to keep an eye on! And his newest duology, The Ouroboros, shows so much growth and development as an author and story teller. Godly Heathens is currently available, and I’d recommend this duology more for older teens than a crossover audience, especially as there is significant violence and gore throughout (content notes are provided in the front matter). Merciless Saviors releases April 16, 2024. Logistics out of the way, let […]

Second Chances Sometimes Are Worth It

The Frugal Wizard's Handbook for Surviving Medieval England by Brandon Sanderson

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I had flipped through The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England in a bookstore and decided it didn’t look great. I’m not a big fan of first-person narrating, and I saw a now mildly spoilery part about 2/3 of the way in that seemed dumb, so I put is back. Fast-forward about 6 months and I see the same nook at the library. On a whim, I decided to give it another chance. I’m actually kind of glad that I did. Our narrator wakes […]

“The only way I can put it is that we recognized, too surely even for surprise, that we shared the same currency.”

In the Woods (Dublin Murder Squad #1) by Tana French

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I can see in this book where everything I loved about The Searcher got its start. However, I am not sad to no longer be in the minds’ eye of Detective Rob Ryan. The narration of In the Woods is entirely in first person, he is telling the reader the story as it happened from somewhere in the near future. He opens the book by announcing that he is an unreliable narrator. It is both true and not, depending on how you define that style […]

The stench is right, this book STINKS!

The Stench of Honolulu by Jack Handey

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“The jungle grew darker and more mysterious. Bugs seemed buggier, and the trees almost seemed alive. The sun was like a blazing ball of fire in the sky. Strange little birds hovered over the flowers, stabbing them with their long, pointed beaks. Sinister rock formations appeared on shore and even reached up out of the water. I guess that’s where Hawaii got its famous nickname, “Land of a Thousand Nightmares.”  The narrator is cajoled by his friend Don into taking a trip to Hawaii. While […]



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