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Whatever It Takes by Adele Parks (view source)
Revision as of 16:16, 29 August 2020
, 16:16, 29 August 2020no edit summary
|publisher=Headline
|date=June 2012
|summary=With everyone and everything changing around her, Eloise's move from London to the countryside is the least of her worries. But will she thrive or crack under the pressure of everything else that's happening? A wonderful read you'll want to lose yourself in for hours at a time.
|cover=0755371348
Whatever it takes means being a constant shoulder to cry on for your best friend even when that nagging voice at the back of your mind is asking whether this is really a two-way friendship.
Whatever it takes means prioritising the needs of others – your daughters, your in -laws – ahead of your own needs. All day, every day.
Whatever it takes means maintaining a calm, put-together demeanour in the face of event crashers, party trashers, unfaithful spouses and life-changing secrets.
When a hesitant Eloise gives up her London life for a move to the country, she still tries to see the positives. The fresh air will be so good for her three girls, her husband Mark can carry on the family business, and her mother in law Margaret will be a great local resource. Her best friend Sara might still be in London, but she’ll never be further away than the end of a phone. It’s all going to work out fine.
But it’s not. It doesn’t take Eloise long to realise that life in a remote corner of the country is not quite all it’s cracked up to be. As the lives of those around her start to crumble, Eloise has a tricky balancing act at hand, trying to keep all the plates in the air so no one falls and smashes into a thousand little pieces. With this pressure mounting on her shoulders , she makes dangerous decisions that have consequences she doesn’t stop to think about until it’s too late.
This is a busy book but focussed on the sort of family life a lot of people will accept as standard nowadays (IVF, adoption, infidelity, aging ageing parents) so what might once have seemed far fetched now reads as realistic and honest. The observations are spot on and the complicated relationships between friends, new and old, and family shine through. Eloise and Sara may be good friends, old friends, friends who know everything about each other, but there are still things they cannot share, secrets they have to keep. Eloise and Mark have three children but they are not a focus of the book, though they are clearly a focus of the couple’s lives. Despite having only finished it this morning, I would struggle to put them in age order or tell you much about any of them beyond their names.
I liked the speed with which the story developed, and the goodbye party that engrossed me at the start was soon forgotten in favour of the troubles clearly brewing in their new home. There were things I expected to happen, which left me satisfied when my predictions came true, and things I don’t think anyone could predict, especially the last few pages. I normally don’t like complete 180s but in this case it was more of a gasped ''No!'' moment than a perturbed, ''Um, really?'' one. I didn’t really feel the adoption storyline was tied up properly, but then maybe that’s realistic. With everything else going on, maybe that’s something that might not get followed through.