Reviewed by Emma Crowley
Your big secret is out. What next?
For Lara and her daughter Eliza, it has always been just the two of them. But when Eliza turns eighteen and wants to connect with her father, Lara is forced to admit a secret that she has been keeping from her daughter her whole life.
Eliza needs answers - and so does Lara. Their journey to the truth will take them on a road trip across England and eventually to New York, where it all began. Dreams might have been broken and opportunities missed, but there are still surprises in store...
Many thanks to Quercus Books via NetGalley for my copy of Anything Could Happen to review and to Sharon for having my review on the blog.
Anything Could Happen by Lucy Diamond is a slow burner of a book which is easy to follow and ultimately develops into an enjoyable and heart-warming read. The pace never deviates from beginning to end hence why I feel it was a slow burner, I kept waiting for a huge twist or turn from the halfway point of the book but that didn’t occur. Instead, we have a relaxed and gentle pace towards the conclusion which ultimately proved satisfying. Anything Could Happen is a real character driven book which asks many questions; Can you rewind and replay the past? Can you ever catch the one that got away? Does anyone really have the perfect family life? What happens when the big secret you have been keeping eventually comes spilling out? This is a story of misunderstandings, miscommunication, regret and above all else connections as one young girl tries to discover her true heritage. Whose genes made her who she is today? For said young woman’s mother the past is coming back to haunt her despite having resolutely and firmly shoved it to the back of her mind a long time ago? Will this haunting of sorts prove to be positive or negative?
‘She’d only just met him and already he felt like everything, a door opening to her future that was suddenly full of bright, shiny colours’. These few words alone instantly sum up the deep attraction and immediate connection that Lara and Ben feel for each other when they randomly meet at a bar in New York. From the brief page or two the reader can tell that this pair although they literally met and dove headlong into something, well they are destined to be with one another. Lara feels all her dreams have come true and she knows what she is doing is reckless but life is for living and if a connection is made that feels real and visceral then she should go for it. Work beckons for Lara and an arrangement is made to meet at an oyster bar that evening at an arranged time in order to continue what they started. Now they have met they do not wish to part but life has a funny manner of getting in the way of the best laid plans and Ben fails to show up for said meeting.
Fast forward 18 years later and life has taken a very different path from the one Lara had envisaged that summer she interned in New York. She is now a single mother to Eliza, who is about to fly the nest to university, and instead of loving her writing as a journalist she is instead a driving instructor driving the same routes day in and day out. Lara had long established an armour around herself but now it’s slipping and the wound is revealed and she discovers it had never healed. It’s wide open and she has to confront things that she has kept hidden. There is literally no getting away from it any longer. She has done her best for Eliza but now her daughter has some new found knowledge which makes her fearless. It changes Eliza and she now feels like her truest, purest self, someone who is unafraid to call out bad behaviour. She will break any rule or social code and I loved how she did this in relation to a couple she babysat for. It was a very minor part of the overall storyline but it showed Eliza’s might and that the time was ripe for her to know everything. The scene with the couple certainly brought a smile to my face, that’s for sure. But what really is driving Eliza is the question - who is her real father? A lesson in school on genes spurs her to discover the truth. She confronts someone and is shocked by what she learns. She turns to Lara for she is the one who holds the key to a secret.
I loved Eliza’s no bullshit attitude. She knew she had been lied to and was now of the age where she wasn’t going to take things lying down. She wanted answers, solid answers and not just Lara fobbing her off to get her to back down. A snap decision from years ago and now the ripples are echoing down. Eliza wants to get to know her real father whom she discovers is Ben. The trouble is Ben doesn’t know of her existence. This is where the many conundrums occur throughout the book. Lara made a decision to go solo and the reasons for which are explained in the book and to me they were justified. But it felt here that things were coming back to bite her and she had no choice but to confront what she had kept bottled away for so long. Eliza sets out on a journey of discovery but so do Ben and Lara. For life has changed for everyone since that fateful meeting in New York. Can that spark be reclaimed? When Ben discovers that he is a father how will this news impact the life he has created for himself now? The entire time you are reading this book you just keep thinking what if Lara and Ben had met at that bar when they were supposed to? Life would have been so different. Is there room for a second chance at love as the title suggests that anything could happen?
But there are so many obstacles in the way and I did feel that both Ben and Lara had moved on but yet now they have something firmly connecting them forever. There was nothing clear cut about anything that occurred once Ben was made aware of his newfound father status. There were so many points of view to consider and all were very well written and presented by the author. So much so that I didn’t know what way I wanted things to turn out. I swayed back and forth between characters several times as there were numerous problems and quite a number of solutions. No doubt about it Eliza had opened up a can of worms that perhaps Lara had wished would have remained resolutely shut but in doing so she took both Ben and Lara on an emotionally charged and turbulent journey which if Eliza had not questioned things than life would have meandered on the way it had been for many years.
We gain an insight into how Ben is viewed as the golden boy of his family but his wife Kirsten feels ostracised and overwhelmed by his sisters and mother. Even more so for the fact that children have never materialised. I have seen other readers comment that they didn’t like Kirsten as a character but I did. I felt she added a bit of spice to the mix and her storyline had a few twists that in any other book I wouldn’t have wanted but here it worked well. She feels betrayed, hurt and lied to and it’s as if now that Eliza has arrived on the scene Lara has given Ben everything he ever wanted. I felt the reactions of every character were real and plausible and could very well occurred in real life. They weren’t over the top nor was the entire concept of the book as a whole. I did think Ben was a bit of a wimp at times and it was as if he wanted nothing to be up scuttled in his life and for it continue on as normal with him in ignorant bliss but on the other hand it came across as if he wanted to establish a decent solid relationship with Eliza and even to test the waters with Lara. To be honest Ben wasn’t my favourite character and I thought the women were far better written.
Anything Could Happen is a good book all about missed opportunities. Although at times some of the chapters felt too long and dragged out. It’s not my favourite by Lucy Diamond but still well worth a read for the range of questions and discussion points it inspires.
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