Review ~ Anything to Have You by Paige Harbison

eARC received via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Release Date: 28th January 2014

Publisher: Harlequin Teen

Description:

Nothing should come between best friends, not even boys. ESPECIALLY not boys.

Natalie and Brooke have had each other's backs forever. Natalie is the quiet one, college bound and happy to stay home and watch old movies. Brooke is the movie—the life of every party, the girl everyone wants to be.

Then it happens—one crazy night that Natalie can't remember and Brooke's boyfriend, Aiden, can't forget. Suddenly there's a question mark in Natalie and Brooke's friendship that tests everything they thought they knew about each other and has both girls discovering what true friendship really means.

My Opinion

Personally, I am slightly disappointed by this book. It started off well but then just became predictable with every twist glaringly obvious way before it was revealed. Basically I continued reading it because I was waiting to see Brooke's reaction. I didn't hate the book, there was something that kept me reading (which I will explain later) but it just fell a little flat and I feel indifferent to the story so I'm finding it hard to write this review as I just didn't connect or engage with it very well.

Anything to Have You started off well. I liked the friendship between Brooke and Natalie it was believable and I could sympathise with Natalie's attitude of not wanting to party but being dragged out by friends. The characters worked well together and I think Brooke's wild side complimented Natalie's more reserved, introverted nature. They bounced off each other and I liked the banter between them.

However, everything slowly started to go down hill after the first party. The author tried to set it up so there would be questions as to who had done what but it was just blatantly obvious, and after that the clues as to Natalie's condition were unmissable - well to everyone but her that is. I just found it irritating that she didn't consider the one factor that was so obvious. As well as this, the dual points of view were annoying. The book is written in first person and in parts so you get big chunks from Natalie or Brooke's point of view. This surprised me when I first saw it as I wasn't expecting a switch at chapter 8 and I thought it might be an interesting spin. However, most of the time it started off repeating previous events just from Brooke's pov. To me it felt like it was just padding and that there wasn't enough story to begin with so to fill it out the author retold sections which wasn't necessary. I feel that if you are going to do dual povs then the story needs to be moved along by it not moved backwards. Personally I feel that the author should have used third person if she was going to tell certain situations from both Natalie and Brooke to limit the repetitive nature.

Overall, I don't really have much to say about this book. It was predictable and slowly went downhill but ended alright. It wasn't bad but I think it's just an average read as there was nothing that made me go wow. I just feel very indifferent.