Book review: Brenda & Effie Forever!

Another Brenda & Effie novel by Paul Magrs, there's a lot of hints being dropped that Brenda & Effie Forever! might be the final book in the series. Brenda, the Bride of Frankenstein and Whitby B&B owner, and her best friend Effie, the last in a line of powerful witches who now runs an antique shop, start off on holiday in Paris where they bump into their local equivalents M Ananas and M Banane (aka Mr Pineapple and Mr Banana, or the Phantom of the Opera and the Hunchback of Notre Dame.) They warn them about great danger if they return home, which is of course exactly what they get.

The story sees the two old ladies and their friends encounter the ghosts of the Brontë sisters, who now run an underground (literally) school of magic and jujitsu, and I thought it took a while to get as quirkily funny as some of the earlier books in the series, but by the second half of the book there's plenty of bizarre little observations that had me chuckling. As for whether this is the final Brenda & Effie volume, it seems to me as if Magrs left the ending open enough that he could call it a day if he wanted, or bring the pair back if he decided he had more stories to tell. For me there's a few too many loose ends left to call this a conclusive ending - I want to know about the dust, for one thing.