Saturday 12 January 2019

Book ~ "A Cat Named Alfie" (2015) Rachel Wells

From Goodreads ~ Edgar Road used to be your typical London street: a road full of people who barely said a word to one another. Then Alfie came along - a big grey ball of fur who changed the lives of every family he met and brought a community together. 

But now a new family has moved into Edgar Road and they, more than anyone else, need Alfie’s help. Can he bring light to their darkest times? Or is it already too late to stop them from falling apart?

Alfie is a doorstep cat who has three families.  He lives with Claire and Jonathan on Edgar Road.  Polly, Matt and their children are their neighbours and Franceska and Tomasz and their children are former neighbours and visit weekly.  All three families are very good friends with each other, thanks for Alfie.

The Snells move onto the street and despite everyone's efforts, tend to keep to themselves.  The Goodwins run the Neighbourhood Watch and aren't going to tolerate it.  They suspect the Snells are up to no good so do all they can to get rid of them, including meetings, petitions and surveillance.  Alfie's families, though they do find the Snells odd,  just want the Goodwins to leave them alone.

Alfie is feeling something that puzzles him until he realizes he is in love with Snowball, the Snells' cat.  Unfortunately like the rest of the Snell family, Snowball makes it quite clear to Alfie that she wants him to leave her alone and she isn't very nice about it.  But Alfie is determined to win her heart.

This is the second in Alfie series (there are currently five in the series).   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 a cat, it does have mature themes.

I look forward to reading the others in this series.

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