Saturday 26 January 2019

Book ~ "Alfie The Holiday Cat" (2017) Rachel Wells

From Goodreads ~ Alfie and George just can’t seem to keep out of trouble. So when they hear that their owners have got a new holiday home, they can’t wait to visit it and enjoy some new adventures.

But when they arrive, they don’t find the comfort they’re used to. Crumbling walls, peeling paint, dripping ceilings ... this little Cornish cottage is clearly on its last legs.

Family and friends rally round to try and save the cottage - but it soon becomes clear that the locals don’t want them there at all. It’s up to Alfie and George to make sure their family is welcomed into the village - that’s if they can keep out of the way of the nastiest cat they’ve ever encountered.

Alfie is a doorstep cat who has three families.  He lives with Claire and Jonathan and their children.  Polly, Matt and their children are their neighbours and Franceska and Tomasz and their children are former neighbours.  All three families are very good friends with each other, thanks to Alfie. Claire and Jonathan get a kitten named George and Alfie becomes his adopted father.

Claire inherits a cottage from a great aunt ... she has great memories of spending time there as a child and wants her children and friends to experience the same.  They discover the cottage is now rundown so the three families agree to pitch in money to renovate it and plan on spending holidays there for many years to come.

The wives, the children, Alfie and George spend the summer at the cottage and their husbands visit on the weekends.  As renovations are going on, the families are enjoying being by the water.  The only problem is there is a nasty neighbour next door named Andrea, who has two daughters and a cat named Chanel who are as equally nasty.  George falls in love with Chanel but she won't give him the time of day.  Andrea is determined to buy their cottage and will do anything to drive the families away.  It's up to Alfie to make sure this doesn't happen.

This is the fourth in Alfie series (there are currently five in the series) and I liked it.  Though it's part of a series, it works as a stand alone.  It is written in first person perspective in Alfie's voice.  We can see the conversations he has with other cats.  Plus he understands the conversations of humans around him (rather than "blah blah blah blah blah Alfie blah blah blah).  Though he can't talk back to them in their language, he does try to communicate in cat-talk and expressions.  As a head's up, though the story is about cats, it does have mature themes.

I look forward to reading others in this series.

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