Genre: Contemporary Fiction/Romance
Anything Could Happen By Lucy Diamond
Living as a single mother with a high spirited 17 year old daughter, who had a propensity towards spontaneity, had its challenges, but never more so than now. Eliza had discovered that Steve wasn't her father, & was demanding answers.
Lara had decided to try to 'make a go of it' with Steve when she was pregnant as attempting to contact Ben to inform him of his impending father hood had proved fruitless & she knew that she could pass the baby off as his without suspicion. However further down the line when they decided to try for another baby & had found out that Steve was in fact firing blanks, the truth had become glaringly clear to all concerned, even Lara, as she'd always hoped that Eliza had been Steve's.
Having met up with Steve (unbeknownst to Lara) for the first time since he had left them, Eliza had been left in no doubt that Steve was most definitely not her father. Eliza was now stood in the kitchen questioning Lara. After a brief game of 'Google the gutless gland', Eliza had presented Lara with a screen full of Ben Mcmanus', like the proverbial police line up & Lara manages to identify the man she met all those years ago.
The feisty teen then decides to embark on a trip to her new found father's home town to confront him. Will Ben welcome this sudden change in his life & how will it effect his current relationship?? How will Ben & Lara feel about each other given the very different perspectives with which they view their last encounter?.....and how will Eliza adapt to to being part of a family unit & it no longer just being her & Lara?
So, having previously said (in my last review) that Lucy Diamond was my favourite author, I am surprised to be able to critique this book & not just cover it in praise. Whilst the book is very funny in parts & heartwarming in others, I found it to be lacking in detail in places where I would have liked there to have been more information. The novel is split up into 3 parts of a year, & by doing so, the story jumps forward by several weeks so that the reader misses out on events between one incident & another. For example, Kirsten leaves the home that her & Ben shared....in the next part she has set up home somewhere else & Ben's relationship with Eliza appears to have moved on, & we miss Ben's initial reaction to being a father & his whole world being turned upside down, once he is alone & Lara & Eliza have returned to Charmouth. An attempt to fill in some of the missing events of the narrative are covered within the Epilogue.
Eliza's boisterous humour which the narrative enters into right from the get go gives the reader a really good sense of their central character. The relationship between Ben & Lara was one I was routing for from the start & loved that they were able to re-visit where it all began with Eliza, but was disappointed that they were unable to find Lara's apple tree....I thought that might have been a nice touch.
The interesting turn of events that Kirsten's life takes 'post Ben' are both humorous & frustrating as I felt that she could have seen a way to maybe patch things up with her husband or at least enter into more discussion, given what happens with her concerning her own 'affair'.....as well as her refusal to concede that they had been 'on a break' at the time of his indiscretion across the miles.
Whilst the conclusion of the novel was predictable from quite early on, & it isn't what I'd describe as a 'page turner', the narrative follows a steady trajectory with the odd surprising 'I didn't expect that' moment.
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