Book Review: Any Way You Want Me by Lucy Diamond

Sadie is happily settled in her relationship, engaged to her lovely fiancé Alex with their 2 young children. But Sadie is convinced that there must be more to life, and begins to exaggerate the truth about her life in emails, meeting new people and catching up with old friends. But things take a massive twist for Sadie when she embarks on an affair with Mark, a distant friend. Can Sadie juggle her own family life, and the secret life she is hiding from her children and Alex? And will Sadie ever learn things don't always go to plan when it comes to relationships and families?

This is most definitely a chick lit book, but where it differed for me was the way the whole thing was written, and the attitude towards Sadie throughout the book. Being written in the first person, you got to hear Sadie's innermost thoughts and desires, and also her hates as well, and to be honest, from these I thought she was a pretty horrible person. At the beginning, she clearly loves her children and Alex, but soon the cracks begin to show and it was from then I really disliked her. I don't normally take a dislike to characters in books, but I made an exception for Sadie!

The idea for me that a woman could threaten her family life by having an affair is terrible, and perhaps this is why I couldn't like her. I didn't like the way she thought about her life, about her fiance and how she seemed to think she was stuck in a rut with her life... sacrificing a few personal freedoms is all part and parcel of being a mum, and I just couldn't understand why Sadie was so negative about her life. The author has clearly thought about the turns she wants this novel to take, because everything seems to happen to perfect timing and you could definitely guess what was going to happen, it was slightly predictable.

The characters themselves were all very well written. Although I didn't like her, Sadie's narrative was good fun to read, she was very bubbly and friendly sounding, and she certainly didn't hold back on her feelings. The way she described her other half Alex made him sound lazy and horrible, but I think he was probably a very nice guy! Mark was the only other main character, and I could smell him a mile off, not a nice chap at all. I could see how he was going to develop and was frankly a bit annoyed that Sadie couldn't! Overall, none of the characters were particularly nice people, all deceiving each other and not being honest, but I guess that is what some people can be like!

Although the main characters were good, there were far too many sub-characters for me to keep track of and this affected my enjoyment of the book a bit. I did find myself flicking back through the book to see who someone was and this was a pain. There were too many of Sadie's friends who popped up to irregularly for me to know or care about them, her sisters again weren't there much and I easily confused them, and there were too many of Alex's colleagues to keep track of. This was a pity, as with less characters, I may have enjoyed the book a bit more.

Overall, this is an okay chick lit book which does the theme of the book on a slightly different way to other books in the genre, but for me it wasn't something I could relate to at all, and consequently I found myself disliking the characters because of their actions. The story was relatively predictable, with a few bits along the way which surprised me but nothing major. A good writing style really saved this book for me, and I have got Diamond's second novel to read, so I do wonder whether it'll be an improvement on this. A good book, but definitely has its niggles for me.

Rating: 3/5