Alphabet Weekends - Elizabeth Noble > Reviews (5)

This story focuses on two main characters Tom and Natalie. They were childhood, family friends. The story also involves Tom and Natalie's families and both their friends. The story is one of life, love, growing up and families. It is a very easy read, broken into short chapters, with simple sentence structure. However it is also fairly compulsive and there are a few home truths too.

~ Main Characters ~

Tom ~ a thirty something single man who starts to realise he has feelings for his old friend Natalie.
Natalie ~ a thirty something single girl who is getting over a relationship with bad Simon and who thinks of Tom as a brother
Patrick ~ Tom's brother who is happily with Lucy

There are other characters including Anna and Nicholas, Natalie's parents; Natalie's sisters and Tom's work colleges. All these other characters have a part to play in the main story and all have their own sub-plots in the story.

~ The Story ~

The story begins on New Years Eve, with Tom and Natalie meeting up. From the first few sentences I could tell that I would enjoy this book. You "truly only ever had one really, really brilliant New Year's Eve." This is the way I feel about New Years so I was instantly hooked. So Natalie is going to a pub to meet Tom, and to cut a long story short Tom decides that he is falling for Natalie. She on the other hand is not at all convinced. Tom challenges Natalie to an amusing game of Alphabet Weekends (hence the title). The aim of this 'game' is to do something together each weekend starting with A and working through to Z to prove to Natalie that she should be with Tom. At this point in the story I immediately had a flick through the book to see the types of activities that they should be doing, especially for J, V, X and Z. I don't recommend doing that as it somewhat spoils the story! However I will give away a few of the letters that I found most amusing. Also you can completely mis-judge where the plot is going.

Most of the chapters in this book take on a letter of the alphabet, and most of the story deals with Tom and Natalie. However in most of the chapters there are sub headings which are other characters names, and detail events in their lives. These other characters lives are intertwined with Tom and Natalie's, and add to the main story well.

My favourite chapter has to be I for Ikea. Elizabeth Noble must have been to Ikea on a Saturday afternoon before writing this, as she describes it as 'Dante's seventh circle of hell.' The detail in her description is great, and she is an amusing author.

S for Simon was, I think, the most disappointing chapter. Throughout the book you get an insight into Simon, Natalie's ex boyfriend, and in this chapter you get to 'meet' him. However I felt that his character was very one dimensional and I didn't really understand why Natalie would want to be with him anyway.

Anna and Nicholas, Natalie's parents also play abig part in this book. You realise how much your parents may see of your life without actually commenting on it, and it is interesting to see how Natalie and her two sisters relate to their father when he becomes ill.

There were many parts of this book that made me laugh, some that made me think and a few that made me sad.

I think that this is chick lit, suggested by the pink cover, but would appeal to many women. Not so sure about the blokes, although I would be interested to see what they think. It is not deep, but it is interesting, and you find yourself thinking about your own Alphabet Activities.

~ The Author ~
Elizabeth Noble has two children, and you can tell! Her writing is littered with observations of humans, and yet is easy to read. She has written two other Novels, The Reading Group and The Tenko Club which were Sunday Times Bestsellers.

~ Other Bits~

ISBN 0-340-83807-8

www.madaboutbooks.com

Printed by Hodder

425 pages (although the A for.. etc takes up a good number of the pages)

I have seen this for sale on:-

WHSMITH.CO.UK for £3.98,
TESCO.COM for £3.89 ~ (they also do an audiobook for £11.24 but I haven't listened to that!)
AMAZON.CO.UK £3.99