Anything To Have You - Paige Harbison Review

“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.”

I’m going to start by saying that I flew through this book and managed to read it under a day; I just couldn’t put it down! I know that there are a lot of bad reviews on good reads and many of them say that this book is a very inaccurate portrayal of teenage children in high school and it probably is but I didn’t feel like that detracted from the story enough to make it a terrible book! I mean, tbh when I was seventeen / eighteen, I was going out drinking most weekends in club and spending all my tie with my boyfriend which isn’t too far from what’s happening here!

This is told both from Natalie’s POV and Brooke’s POV but isn’t split into alternating chapters. Instead you get several chapters told from Natalie’s POV and then several chapters from Brooke’s POV. I preferred reading from Natalie’s POV and I found that although I was interested in Brooke’s POV to see her side of the story that was happening in the book, I wasn’t as bothered about Brooke herself like I was with Natalie. Brooke just seemed like a manipulative, jealous bitch and I just couldn’t get on board with anything she was doing. 

As with most people, I found the first chapter really difficult to get through and I though I was going to really struggle with carrying on with the story but it really picks up after that first chapter – so much so that, as said above, I managed to read it in under a day. 

You could see the twist coming from miles away but it didn’t really detract that much from the story and plotline. And I also liked the way that Harbison took the story to get to the twist. The build-up of Natalie’s and Aiden’s relationship felt organic and not forced; especially when you find out both sides of how Aiden and Brooke got together in the story. And a mentioned above, because of how Brooke was, I really didn’t feel that sorry for her.

This is a young adult story as the characters are all 17 and 18 years old but it is a much more mature YA novel and deals with a lot of alcohol, drugs and drug taking and sex so that would be something to consider. 

I’d recommend this is you’re looking for a more mature YA novel which involves coming-of-age and romance along with some over-exaggerated use of alcohol, drugs and drug taking and sex along with the partying [although I didn’t feel like this detracted from the story itself.