How did I miss The Stranger Times by C.K McDonnell here is my review of this hilarious, action-packed urban fantasy filled with memorable characters and set in Manchester.
The Stranger Times is dedicated to the weird and the wonderful (but mostly the weird), it is the go-to publication for the unexplained and inexplicable. At least that’s their pitch. The reality is less auspicious. Their editor is a drunken, foul-tempered, and foul-mouthed husk of a man who thinks little of the publication he edits. His staff are a ragtag group of misfits. And as for the assistant editor… well, that job is a revolving door–and it has just revolved to reveal Hannah Willis, who’s got problems of her own.
When tragedy strikes in Hannah’s first week on the job, The Stranger Times is forced to do some serious investigating. What they discover leads to a shocking realisation: some of the stories they’d previously dismissed as nonsense are in fact terrifyingly real. Soon they come face-to-face with darker forces than they could ever have imagined
Review
One of the amazing joys of being a book blogger is discovering new books that I never would have normally come across. The Stranger Things by C K Mc Donnell was one of those books and I devoured it book in one sitting.
I received a free copy of this book for a free and unbiased opinion.
This urban fantasy has everything a cast of memorable characters -I’m not sure if I admire or despise the outspoken, drunk, intelligent Bancroft the trigger-happy editor of The Stranger Times. Grace, Reggie, and Ox form the rest of the team at The Stranger Times newspaper ( funny extracts included in the book) and are all quirky and fascinating characters that bring this urban fantasy to life.
Hannah is the new assistant editor escaping her former life as a socialite and is thrown into a new world of UFOs, aliens and monsters and has a bit of fright when she learns ( along with the rest of the team ) that one of these things is real.
The underlying plot of good vs evil, secret societies and magic are well written and the book has a fresh take on this by basing this in a Northern City in England- Manchester and its people form part of the cast in its own way. The plot and underlying mystery kept me reading right till the end. Some vivid and original descriptions made an impression.
But the main strength of the book is the humour which is truly British ( and Northern) and there were several times when I couldn’t stop laughing.
I have to confess I jumped straight into the sequel The Charming Man as soon as I finished.
Perfect for Fans
The Dresden Files (review here), The Tarot Card Sequence, ( review here) Swashbucklers (review here),Terry Prachett
Content Warning
References to a child’s death
Series Book Lover 
This is such a good review. I really enjoyed this too but for some reason, I found it really hard to write a review for it.
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Thank you
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