Originally posted on Just Geeking by.

Content warnings:
This book contains scenes of brainwashing, kidnapping, gore, blood, violence, head explosions, and exploitation of people seeking therapy. There is a reference to an emotionally abusive relationship (off-page) where a husband cheats on his wife and gaslights her into believing that her noticing him looking at other women was just “in her head”.

This review contains spoilers for the previous book so if you have not read it please do not look beneath the spoiler tag!


The start of Love Will Tear Us Apart comes as a bit of a shock as Hannah has resigned suddenly with the intent of restarting her marriage with her cheating husband. It’s a pretty flimsy excuse and normally one that the rest of the Stranger Times team would probably question – if they didn’t have more going on. Not only is Bancroft acting stranger than normal, but one of their guest columnists has disappeared randomly.

The problem is that the columnist never actually existed nor did the stories that they wrote, they were both a fabrication of Stranger Times journalist Ox. Yet someone has kidnapped a very real person…. did one of Ox’s wild stories actually hit on a truth and can the Stranger Times team save the poor chap before it’s too late?

Meanwhile, what are Hannah and Bancroft up to and is Hannah’s replacement a spy or an ally in disguise?

Delivering another book full of chaos and hilarity, in Love Will Tear Us Apart C.K. McDonnell brings the subplot of Bancroft’s wife to a close. Is she alive or dead? I’m not going to spoil that for you. I will say that it is a satisfying conclusion that kept me on the edge of my seat. There is so much happening in this third instalment of the Stranger Times series that it may seem as though it’s too much, however, as usual McDonnell has a plan that comes together very nicely.

It was wonderful to see Hannah off on her own, offering her a chance to shine solo and gain some much-needed confidence. McDonnell introduces a great range of secondary characters in Love Will Tear Us Apart, and his aptitude for writing colourful characters is particularly notable with Moira who Hannah notes “was a great big dollop of Glaswegian perspective, unafraid to point out that not only was the emperor not wearing any clothes but he was also aggressively waving his genitalia about”. I laughed out loud so many times during Moira’s scenes.

Betty and Cathy were equally fabulous, and I adored the scenes with Betty and Stella. I hope we have not seen the last of those two formidable ladies. We also get to see a lot more of the mysterious Mrs Hawnforth and learn more about her which was great.

While the Stranger Times series has never shied away from difficult topics or dark material, this is a much darker book compared to the previous two so please check the content warnings before reading. With a deft hand, McDonnell uses humour to navigate these topics with care proving that comedy can be used effectively without the need to be nasty.


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I skipped part 2 inadvertently, but as for the plot, that doesn't really matter. The abundance of the supernatural and the abundance of special characters is taking its toll on me. But to be honest, I thought so before buying it and still took it on account of the prospect to be still enjoying it on the audio / reading level. I still think the book is incredibly well read.

A really good book (as usual) which commenced with Hannah, the assistant editor, mysteriously, leaving the paper. She was replaced by a very unusual type of person named Betty. The story flips all over the place and we discover that Hannah has gone to an exclusive spa where she becomes involved in a number of strange, goings-on. Her replacement gets involved in a number of magical happenings, and Vincent Banecroft becomes obsessed with his wife's ghost. I thought this was a wonderful story, which had an excellent mix of humour and drama. There is also a very satisfactory ending. ( )

This third installment of what has quickly become my favorite Urban Fantasy series played with some of the narrative threads explored in the previous books and moved forward in a very intriguing and quite satisfactory way, offering the by now familiar mix of humor and drama while at the same time delving deeper into some of the main characters, bringing to the surface a few unexpected facets of their personalities.

The team at the Stranger Times is undergoing a period of unsettling changes: Hannah Willis, the assistant editor who was carving her own niche at the paper, just resigned abruptly, with no other explanation that she’s considering going back to her cheating husband - and to better gather her thoughts on the matter, she booked a stay at a new-age-oriented, exclusive spa where she will learn how to put her life into perspective. The newspaper’s owner sends a very strange lady, Betty Cavendish, to replace Hannah and Betty promptly asserts her rule by fending off easily editor Banecroft’s bullying attitude and keeping poor Grace occupied (or rather distressed) by requiring a financial inventory. But it’s chief editor Vincent Banecroft who shows the biggest changes, because he’s become obsessed with his wife’s ghost, whose voice calls to him through the apparition of another ghost, young hopeful Simon, and asks him for help: consumed with the need to contact her and convinced that she might still be alive, Banecroft loses any interest in the Stranger Times’ proceedings and sets on a road to hell that might cost him much more than the paper he manages…

Unlike the previous two books in the series, Love Will Tear Us Apart does not follow the team as a whole but rather sends them all in different directions, engaged in different adventures, and that gives them a chance to experience some individual growth as characters: such is the case, for example, of shrouded-in-mystery Stella whose bizarrely awkward partnership with Betty takes her for once out of the confines of the paper - even though it’s for a very harrowing grave-robbing expedition; she also turns into a more hands-on member of the team when the infamous Loon Day comes around once again and the Stranger Times is literally inundated by a mob of more or less crazy people eager to share their tales of the uncanny with the staff.

Hannah herself is undergoing some momentous changes: her meeting with a very different ex-husband Karl ends with her booking a stay at the Pinter Institute, an exclusive retreat where she experiences a very shaky start by falling flat on her face. The Institute is a strange place, to say the least, run by plastic-faced personnel that are just a half-step short of being robotic, and poor Hannah is subjected to the strangest remedies that go from hot yoga to other… ahem… intrusive therapies that should help her “find herself” but sound too weird even to someone used to the madness of the Stranger Times.

As for Banecroft, he is a man obsessed: since making contact with the voice of his departed wife, he has been so concentrated on unraveling this mystery that he left everything else unravel around him, including his own well-being. I have to admit that I felt deep compassion for this loudmouthed, uncouth character whose manners are as inexcusable as his own personal hygiene, and I followed the narrative thread concerning his quest with great trepidation. This search brings him into contact with a couple of previously encountered characters - Cogs, the compulsive truth-teller living on a boat and his talking dog Zeke, who are given a good deal of narrative space here and offer some of the most amusing pages in a story that walks on the uneasy balance between mystery and fun.

If it might seem that all these diverging narrative threads could be a recipe for a confusing read, think again, because CK McDonnell does weave them quite masterfully into a cohesive whole that evolves into a veritable page-turner once the story establishes its “legs”: the shortish chapters, which move from one character to the other, encourage you to keep reading, and as the questions and the revelations pile up it becomes almost impossible not to let oneself be swept up in the current of events. Thankfully, there are some stops where readers can catch their proverbial breath, because in this third book of the series you will find the very welcome return of the “sensationalist articles” encountered in the firs volume: from the “discovery” of the origin of spam telephone calls in outer space to an accusation of plagiarism directed at Stephen King, these newsflashes offer the chance for a relaxing laugh before delving again into the plot’s twists and turns.

And as far as the plot is concerned, I’m aware I said next to nothing about it, but to do so would run the risk of spoiling your enjoyment, so I will only say that some of the threads that started in the previous two books reach here their - quite satisfactory - fruition, and prepare the ground, or so I hope, for future stories set in the quirkiest newspaper I ever learned about. And I will welcome those stories with unabashed delight…. ( )

A new assistant editor is starting at The Stranger Times while Hannah takes up a therapy retreat in an attempt to reconcile with her ex-husband. A conspiracy theorist wrongly identified as a columnist for the paper is kidnapped.

Very funny as usual, but unfortunately I didn't remember enough of what had happened in the previous books to always follow what was going on. ( )