A Dependable Friend

 

I came across The Official Alice Blog and spent some time reading it in my lunch hour at work. I am 23, coming up for 24 years old. I read my first Alice book when I was 12. I believe it was ‘Reluctantly, Alice.’ For a long time, it was my favourite book and I branched out to ‘The Agony of Alice,’ ‘All but Alice,’ ‘Alice in April’ and ‘Alice in Rapture, Sort of.’ I never saw any of the others in the bookshops and that was where my Alice reading stopped. I turned into quite the Amazon fan when I was 18 and invested in a few more of the books. Ever since then, on and off I have been buying them when I need a bit of comfort and a pick me up. Perhaps I am too old to still be reading about Alice, but she feels like a dependable friend and someone you can rely on at the end of a bad day.

 

‘Intensely Alice’ made me cry and I’m not ashamed to admit it. I’ve laughed with Alice, cried with Alice and in a way, grown up with Alice. I come from the era of Sweet Valley and The Babysitters Club and it’s so refreshing that whilst these series have dwindled away, Alice remains as fresh as ever.

 

Please keep doing what you’re doing – or at least until she opens her time capsule! You’ve got this twenty-something through some very stressful periods!

Thank you so much for your letter.  Readers will be delighted to know that older fans are still reading Alice.  Actually, Alice is like a dependable friend to me also.  When it’s time to write another Alice book, I settle down with my clipboard on my lap and “become” Alice for a while, wondering what’s going to happen to her next.  I know her so well that the next episode in her life seems very natural to me.  Yes, in the very last book, she opens the time capsule.  So many readers have asked for that!