This book was provided by the publisher for review purposes. All opinions are my own_.

REVIEW

Where do I start on this one? Maybe I should say that while I enjoyed Anything to Have You by Paige Harbison, it wasn’t exactly what I thought it would be and I’m not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing.

The friendship, and I do use that term lightly, between Natalie and Brooke is pretty typical of teenage girls. It’s more of a one-sided friendship, but they don’t really realize it at all. This friendship leads to pretty much all the problems throughout the book. All of the predictable, high-school, petty drama depicted in Anything to Have You is a direct result of this one-sided friendship.

“When I know it isn’t right, I don’t stick around because he’s hot or because I wish I had those feelings.”

Natalie

Yay for Natalie. In terms of characters, while she wasn’t perfect, she was better than her bff Brooke (more on that later). Natalie was sure of herself, to a certain extent, and for that reason, she was very different than most characterizations of teenage girls that we see in books today. She knew what she wanted and what she didn’t want and she didn’t try to conform to anyone else’s view of what she should be; except for her best friend Brooke. I don’t understand how or why Natalie is even friends with Brooke. It’s not that they are just total opposites, but Brooke is a vacuous waste of space with little to no regard for herself or others.

“I was completely irrelevant, I had no boyfriend, probably no one lusting after me, and now everyone with a penis wanted to bang my best friend. Fucking fantasic.”

Brooke

That pretty much sums up Brooke right there. Her whole focus in life is to be the centre of attention and it doesn’t really matter if she likes the people she wants focused on her. She is just a horrible, horrible person. And I don’t say that lightly. I tried to find a redeeming quality in her throughout the book, but there was none. She puts down her supposed best friend, she manipulates her boyfriend and all those around her, and just generally makes an ass out of herself for the entire book.

“Love is the one thing that no matter how much you want it, if it’s not there, there is nothing you can do to get it. No measure of hard work, begging, crying, wanting or needing; nothing in the world can make love happen out of nothing.”

Brooke

All in all, Anything to Have You by Paige Harbison was enjoyable, if not a bit predictable. Oh, and you might think that the above quote means that Brooke redeemed herself in some way by the end of the book, but not so. She remained a douche right until the end.