Very light easy read book.

Loved the fact it spoke about Belfast and Portrush as I'm from N.Ireland and could picture the scene.

It really focused on friendship, loss and mental health.

Grapsed easily from start to finish.

When Mary falls in love with Jim and moves from Belfast to London to be with him she expects to live happily ever after. Instead she finds herself alone when Jim suddenly disappears after 6 years together. Mary waits at the train station with a "come home Jim" sign for 7 years before a journalist decides to find out what happened to Jim.
An interesting story with lots of characters, each with their own issues and problems. This book deals with friendship, loss and mental health.

Poor Mary. So sad, yet determined to keep up her vigil looking for a man she lost long ago.

Is she delusional, or just down on her luck?

Why is nobody really noticing her?

What sort of help does she really need?

The characters that emerge are like tiny branches getting their first leaves, whilst Mary is the unbending trunk.

Not that original, but an easy and pleasant enough read.

Thank you to Netgalley for my arc of this book!

When this first started i was instantly drawn in, Mary has been looking for her missing boyfriend for 7 years and has basically put her life on hold waiting for him to return.
I loved Mary and wanted to know more, but as the story went on it just seemed to drag with not much happening.
I kept reading because I wanted to find out what happened to Jim and why he had just disappeared but when we did find out it was just all a bit of a letdown.

Not much happened and then the ending wasn't much and it just left me feeling a bit what was the point?

It does a really good job of highlighting loneliness and mental health and I really liked the characters but nothing really happened and there wasn't much of a story. Just wasn't a book for me unfortunately.

Lovely book, thought provoking and very enjoyable. Really well written and engaging will be recommending to friends and family

Is it better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all? Mary could certainly answer that. This is a book of eternal hope, loss and much more. A must read so five stars.

I found this book a bit of a slow starter, didnt have me hooked to start with, once I past the half way point though it turned from a 3 star to a 4 star book.

How long will you wait for your loved one? 1 year? 5 years? Mary has been waiting for Jim's return for 7 years, every evening you will find her at Ealing station holding up a sign that says 'Come back Jim', because she is not giving up on their love. Then Alice meets Mary and she knows she needs to help Mary finds Jim. Where is Jim?

This book is the kind of book that will take you on an emotional journey, a journey of loss and hope, of endings and new beginnings. It talks about love, the great love between Jim and Mary, and missing people, however the main topic addressed is depression and how it affect men, who usually chose to not talk about it, as the society still considers this a stigma.

I was in two minds about this book. It originally caught my eye because of the cover and it sounded like an interesting read, mainly because it was set around Ealing, which is where I used to live and my family still do, so close to home. I’ve definitely been in and out of Ealing Broadway station a lot over the years!

It started off well as we slowly got to know Mary, who sits in Ealing Broadway station every evening with a sign, waiting for the mysterious Jim to come back home. I did feel sorry for Mary, she seemed like a nice character, but very lonely, and a bit delusional. I mean why would you sit in a station every night waiting for an ex-boyfriend to reappear when it was clearly obvious he’d decided, for whatever reasons, that their relationship was over and disappeared.

The story flipped back and forth to when they met, to the present day, and in the end involved people that Mary worked with on a helpline, who found out exactly who she was waiting for and went on a quest to ‘find’ Jim for her.

It was quite sad really, but in the end lots of things were sorted out and Mary started to get her life back again, along with new friends who’d helped her out.

So whilst I did enjoy it at the beginning, I also lost a bit of interest in the middle when I felt it dragged a bit, and I did skim read a bit to get to the end and find out what actually happened.

This is the story of Mary O’Connor from Belfast which is where she meets the love of her life Jim Whitney, a successful London doctor. After a whirlwind romance Jim whisks Mary back to London where they marry and have several happy years together until suddenly, without warning Jim disappears. Mary then spends the next seven years in a sort of twilight existence with a mundane job in a supermarket during the day and spending her evenings as a volunteer in a crisis centre. In between these two jobs she spends her time on Ealing station with a sign that says, ‘Come Home Jim’ in the hope that he will see the sign and return to her. One day she causes a commotion at the station as somebody jogs her trying to get past. Somebody films this and posts the situation on social media where it goes viral. Alice, a struggling journalist sees the footage and thinks there is a potential story in Mary’s situation. She befriends Mary without telling her why, intending to try and find Jim to get an interesting story. We are taken on a journey from the time Jim and Mary meet in 2005 until his disappearance in 2011, but then the story goes back and forward from his disappearance until present time. This is a love story of sorts, beautifully told and it draws you in, leaving you wanting to know what has happened to Jim. It touches on a variety of topics including depression. What unfolds is not just the story of Jim and Mary, but also of the other characters especially Alice, the journalist, and also Kit and Ted who are friends of Mary from the crisis centre. These people all have their own problems which unfold as the story is told. Thanks to NetGalley for allowing me an advanced reading copy of this lovely book.

A very different type of love story that eventually blossoms into even more love stories. Mary maintains her vigil for Jim, Alice has her own past, as do Kit and Ted, but they are all bound together and their stories intermingle .
A brilliantly written tale of families, love and loss, at a time when human relationships are under so much pressure.
A book that you could put down, but didn't want to.

This is a heartwarming joy of a book. One to be recommended.

Mary has waited for 7 years for Jim not knowing where he has disappeared to. Her life has been on hold. Alice, with secrets of her own, decides to help her find answers and allow her to move forward with her life. Along with Kit they decide to find Jim.

This touching novel touches on the issue of chronic depression suffered silently by many men and the repercussions of living alongside it.

There is hope at the end and a future.

Mary has been waiting for Jim for years, at the same place, the same time, with the same sign, asking him to come home.
A journalist looking to improve her career is taken by Mary’s story and is determined to discover what happened to Jim.
It’s hard to read this book without wanting to rush to the end in order to find out what on Earth has happened to Jim, but the journey here is just as important as the resolution and I absolutely enjoyed every bit of it.

This was a diversion from my usual reading, an emotional and sensitive story of depression - primarily male depression. It’s a sad but compelling book, one that rolls along but draws you in. Likeable characters and interwoven threads. A recommended book - but keep some tissues handy towards the end.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for my ARC in exchange for my honest review.

The book explores the different ways we deal with loss. The depression, the refusal to move on., the fear...
Mary has lost her husband and she's been waiting for him to come back to her for seven years. Everyday she goes to the train staition and waits there with a sign "Jim Come Home"'.
The story goes back and forth between her meeting Jim for the first time and the beginning if their relationship and her life now . It starts slow, but gradualy more characters are brought in and the book gains pace.
Everybody around Mary have their own loss that they carry and it is interesting to see how different everybody acts about it.
I really enjoyed the book and I liked the ending too.

I found this a difficult read as I didn't warm to the characters at all. I didn't really want Mary to find Jim as he sounded pretty awful. And the reveal at the end left me extremely irritated.

We meet Mary as she stands at the exit to a train station with a sign saying “Come Home Jim”, something that she has done every day for the past seven years. After a chance comment makes her an internet sensation, local journalist Alice – badly in need of a front-page story – befriends Mary and attempts to find out what happened to Jim, and where is he now?

We follow the story of Mary and Jim in flashbacks, as well as the interaction of Mary, Alice, and some of Mary’s colleagues at a local helpline in the present. Both timelines are successful, and deal with really difficult themes like loss, bereavement, abandonment and mental ill health with a lightness of touch and with genuine warmth. There is a gentle humour that runs throughout, which makes the characters really relatable. Although this is an emotional story, the hope and friendships of the characters is lovely to read. The pacing is good, and I liked that the ending wasn’t what I was expecting.

My thanks to the author, NetGalley, and the publisher for the arc to review.

This book had some great characters- I really felt for Mary and Alice. I really appreciated how it touched upon men’s mental health, an important subject that is slowly become more accepted to talk about

This is a heart wrenching tale about the effect the sudden disappearance of someone you love has on your life and how difficult it is to move on. This is predominantly the story of Mary who is still waiting for Jim seven years since he abruptly disappeared and how her love for him has carved a routine in her life to show him she will be there when he is ready to return. A fleeting moment of frustration brings her story to the attention of Alice who has ulterior motives when she decides to investigate what happened to Jim. Both Mary and Alice are brilliant characters with a lot of depth, I personally preferred Alice perhaps because Mary was quite introverted in Jim’s absence. The storyline is very strong and relevant and concluded well, it’s a sad but incredibly thoughtful original story.

With thanks to Netgalley and Random House uk

The ends of the earth is a beautiful book that deals with mental health and how it can and does affect man. it also tells the story of friendship too,

I'm sure this will become a best seller.