Genre: Urban Fantasy
Age: Adult

This is one of those books I was left feeling kind of indifferent towards. It’s possible my expectations were a little too high here. It’s not a bad book, it’s enjoyable enough, but it falls into that kind of middling category for me. At times, it feels like the book is trying too hard to be Discworld, without fully understanding what makes Discworld so great.

The Stranger Times is a newspaper akin to Weekly World News, reporting on the strange and wonderful goings on in Manchester.

The main character is Hannah, who throughout is just kind of bland. The most interesting thing about her is that she’s recently divorced and possibly set fire to her ex-husband’s property, a topic skirted around throughout the book. The paper’s editor is Vincent Banecroft, a drunk who manages to shoot himself (literally) in the foot early on, and treats the NHS staff who treat him so poorly they are very relieved later when he’s not the one who needs help.

The characters overall feel like stock archetypes, slotted in to fulfil one particular function. McDonnell strives for a diverse cast, but in a way that seems a touch performative rather than something with actual thought behind it. A lot of the plot points were overly cliché, though there were a couple of fun scenes surrounding the running of the newspaper itself, and when we got to spend actual time behind the scenes of the paper, that’s where the strength lies.

Overall, however, this lacks originality, and the actual tense scenes are ended with deus ex machina moves, making it clear before we get to the climax itself that none of the characters are really in any danger – they’ll get saved by something before the end. I guess I went in hoping for something more like Rivers of London, but it lacks the kind of elements that make that series interesting. A poorly formatted arc where the newspaper clippings were unreadable didn’t help this, either. I do have the second book on my TBR, but I’m not in any rush to get to it.

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Bookshop UK

Review by Elle Turpitt

Twitter & Instagram: @elleturpitt

www.elleturpitt.com

I received this ebook from Bantam Press via NetGalley for review consideration.