Love Will Tear Us Apart: (The Stranger Times 3)

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We can have all the hilarity and madcap scenes each book dishes out, but that intrigue is one of the master strokes of this series. The main focus of the story is that acceleration and culmination of Banecroft’s own personal hell – a storyline that has been building since the beginning of the first book. His debut novel, A Man With One of Those Faces – a comic crime novel – was published in 2016 and spawned The Dublin Trilogy books and the spin-off McGarry Stateside series.

And, if for no other reason, the dedication for the bonus short story at the end, makes it a solid five. Before I start this review of Love Will Tear Us Apart, the third book in The Stranger Times series, there is something you need to know. As if that wasn't enough, one of the paper's ex-columnists has disappeared, a particularly impressive trick seeing as he never existed in the first place.For me, the plotting on this book was a bit too fractured and it was quite hard to keep all of the scattered plot lines together in my head. Most notably, Hannah has bizarrely left her job and gone back to her husband, resulting in the jolly Elizabeth Cavendish the Third (or Betty) becoming the new assistant editor. We are then treated (and this book is a pure treat) to an almost breathless race to help them all regain their lives. As I said above, with each book McDonnell drags us deeper and deeper into his magical version of Manchester, allowing us to learn more about the creatures that live along side us, as well as giving us a deeper insight into The Founders, a council of magical beings who control all those who live here. There’s clearly a lot more to come for our intrepid team, and I can’t wait to find out what happens next.

The page space could have been used for delving into the subtleties of the characters’ actions, which I could have done with more. His obsession with finding out more about his wife is taking over and visits from his friend in the night (trying to avoid spoilers here) are only exacerbating the situation. One of the best things about this book is it continues the intrigue surrounding the different factions vying for power or advantage in this magical world of the Founders and Folk. In this time of crisis, is her decision to swan off to a fancy new-age retreat run by a celebrity cult really the best thing for anyone?I think I might pick out Gordon's monologue on the characteristics of various bird species… - great writing. The only negatives were in the formatting of the ARC which made it hard to read in places, bur when this gets cleaned up for publication it'll be a great entry in the series.

The tempo sometimes lulled a bit too much for me and I felt like I wanted the whole thing to move along a bit quicker. Meanwhile Vincent is behaving oddly - even for him, as his obsession with finding his deceased wife consumes him, and Stella just wants to get on with the job - which means tackling her first Loon Day! Also check out The Stranger Times podcast, available almost everywhere, and featuring short stories set in the world of The Stranger Times, written by C. And in this third volume there are mentions (although clearly defined) of events and people from the previous two books. In addition I really enjoy how the different volumes of this series tie into each other, picking up old characters, develop the main characters and introduce new ones, while also being good stories on their own.These are fun satirical urban fantasy novels that don’t take themselves too seriously and offer a refreshing take on the genre.