The Stag and Hen Weekend - Mike Gayle (2012)

Phil's finally going to marry his long-term girlfriend Helen, and all that stands in their way is the stag and hen dos. Phil wants a quiet stag do in his home town, yet his friends - eager to be let off the leash - want to let their hair down and go all out for a weekend in Amsterdam. His fiancee Helen's hen do couldn't be more different from the guys' event - she picks a luxury country hotel and spa for her friends. But both Phil and Helen encounter people on their weekends that dredge up their past and have the ability to stop them from living happily ever after. The book is split into half and written separately, leaving readers to choose whether they read the hen or stag section first. While this worked really well in that there are clues in each story that make sense when you read the second half, it also meant that the book didn't really properly end. Both stories ended a little ambiguously, and this was probably due to the fact that you could read either story first, and maybe it would have ruined it for the second section if you already knew how it ended. Putting the ending aside, it was a fun read, and it was great to be able to follow the stags on their stag do, which for a chick lit book we don't often get to do! (AB)

The Stag and Hen Weekend, by Mike Gayle, is the story of Phil and Helen, a couple in their 30s about to commit their lives to one another ... that is of course if they can just manage to get through their respective stag and hen weekends (his: Amsterdam; hers: a country house and day spa in the Peak District) without falling apart. Told as two separate stories, The Stag and Hen Weekend can be read from front to back or from back to front, letting readers choose whose story they want to read first. It's out in February. Check out the trailer below:

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