Anywhere for You is the first book I have read by Abbie Greaves. I think this is a good book to read over a rainy weekend or a time when you find yourself snowed in at home. Mary works during the day and some nights she helps at a hotline. She has been standing at Ealing Station in London with a sign that simply says “Come Home Jim.” What happened to Jim? One day she broke down and was swearing and screaming at people in the station. Alice goes over to her to comfort her and listens to her story. She decides to help.

The story travels back and forth to the past and to the present. It is a little slow at times. How long can someone hold on to the past? How does one get over a love that was never supposed to end? While depressing at times, the book is also a story of friendship and has several minor characters. I enjoyed the book and felt the author did a good job with the topic of mental illness. Thank you William and Morrow and NetGalley for an ARC of this book. The opinions in this review are my own.

Mary O'Connor has been keeping vigil at the Ealing Broadway Station for her lost love, Jim, for the past seven years. When a filmed outburst in the crowded station makes her an overnight Internet sensation, local journalist Alice becomes determined to learn more about Mary and what actually happened to Jim. What follows is a story about loneliness, mental health issues, and friendship.

The premise of this book intrigued me; I thought it would be an interesting, if sad, love story. However, the love story was actually my least favorite part of this story. The story flips back and forth between present day and Jim and Mary's romance. I must confess that I found the present day story to be much more compelling and actually wanted to spend more time with the side characters than with Jim and Mary's romance, which I found troubling throughout the book. It's a very sad story, although it has bright spots. I'm glad I had a chance to read it, even if it was different than I expected.

Thanks to Netgalley and Book Club Girls for the chance to read this one.

For seven years, Mary has stood at the Ealing Broadway station in London with a sign, waiting for her long-lost love, Jim, to come home. The story has an interesting premise and I was intrigued by Mary’s point of view. However, the point of view soon changes and remains for the most part with Alice, a young reporter on a mission to find Jim and uncover the truth as to why he disappeared. Her initial motive was selfish; she needs a good story in order to keep her job. She’s dishonest with Mary and Kit and misleads them to get information, but eventually Alice does redeem herself.

The story is told from dual timelines and unfolds as a mystery between Alice’s investigation in the present, and Mary and Jim’s story in the past. I thought this worked well, though I would have liked to read more from Mary in the present. The middle part of the book progressed slowly but picks up in the last 80% when the truth is finally revealed. Thank you very much to NetGalley and the Book Club Girls for this ARC.

A video goes viral of a woman holding a sign up in a tube station. The sign reads “Come Home Jim”, and the public wants the story. Enter Alice, an aspiring reporter, with her job on the line.

We slowly learn about the love story between Mary and Jim. To Mary, they seem like soul mates that will be together forever. Jim has some challenges and disappears one day. Mary never gives up hope and has a seven-year daily vigil at the tube station where she used to greet him after work.

Alice befriends Mary and works to unravel the mystery of what happened to Jim, trying to track him down through various sightings. After all these years, can Mary and Jim be reunited, or can Mary get the closure she needs to move on with her life?

I wish I would have connected a bit more with these characters. The alternating timeline chapters may have worked better if told chronologically. This was my first read by this author. I liked the positive messaging at the end of this one and would read other books by this author.

This is a heartbreaking story of love and acceptance but offers an element of mystery. The plot takes us back and forth starting with 2005 and present day (2018).

Mary begins as our main character, you can feel her desperation and sadness, but her overall love for her missing partner as well. The author brings an element of friendship into the storyline that is slightly unexpected and introduces us to Alice, who becomes a secondary main character. Through her friendships, Mary is asked to assess the truth of her relationship with Jim which makes old wounds even deeper. It is a story of self acceptance, letting go and ultimately finding your self happiness.
Overall, this is an enjoyable read.
Thank you to NetGalley and Random House UK/Cornerstone for the arc for an honest review

This was a slow moving, often sad book dealing with loss and mental health. Maybe it was the timing of when I read it, but I did not enjoy it as much as I had hoped to. It alternates between the past focusing on Mary and Jim’s relationship and the present with Jim missing and Mary hoping he will come home. I did enjoy many of the other characters and they brought several much needed uplifting moments. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.

Anywhere For You by Abbie Greaves is a very different tale of a woman navigating grief. Mary stands at the train station for h ours every day holding a sign reading, "COME HOME JIM." She had been standing there for years; hoping some day he would read it and know she was waiting. One day, someone pushed her, and strung as tight as she was, she pushed back, verbally. Someone else caught it with a smart phone and it was posted on line for all to see. Millions saw it, including a newspaper reporter, Alice, who was both intrigued and desperate. She was about to lose her job and her only hope was a really great story. This could be it, so she arranged to meet and befriend Mary. This bit of research blossoms into friendship and sympathy and before she knew it, she and one of Mary's co-workers at a suicide hotline called Nightline, Kit, were off chasing leads, trying to find Jim. They found him but things didn't work out as they hoped.

This was a heart-breaking, yet positive story, for all involved. Alice loses her job but writes the best thing she's ever written and has a new job. She has opened herself up after learning about how she had ended up where she was. Mary accepted what had happened and moved on. The other people at Nightline were doing better as well. It was all based on learning about depression, how it manifests itself, and how it can be dealt with. Alice's mother had known it intrinsically and continued to function although Alice had never understood. Now she did. It is a moving story and one begging to be told as so many in today's world suffer from depression. This is just one small slice of life, but lovingly told. The story itself is not depressing at all and I recommend it.

I was invited to read a free ARC of Anywhere For You by Netgalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own. #netgalley #anywhereforyou

Though this sounded like an interesting premise for a story, I found it a bit slow going at the start. I admired Mary’s dedication to her missing husband, but her going to a train station every night for 7 years to hold up a sign and look for him seemed a bit obsessive. I guess it didn’t work for me as I’d hoped.

Honestly... this book was super sad. I’ve never been involved with an alcoholic romantically, but have close friends who have been. This story just brought that heartache and hope to the front. I feel it was pretty realistic in the telling, although the search was a bit contrived. I also thought Alice’s story was a bit disconnected. I wish that I could have sad it brought me to tears or made me really think about past choices. But I just felt like I was reading a story that I didn’t want to get too involved in. I don’t need to feel sad... But I did really enjoy the ending.

“Mary O’Connor had become part of the furniture at Ealing Broadway station. Like most items abandoned on the roadside, she is overlooked and underappreciated.” So opens Abbie Greaves’ Anything for You, a gem of a psychological novel about troubled souls, love, loss, and healing.

The story opens with a brief prologue set in 2018 as Mary powerwalks from her job stocking shelves at a London supermarket, enters West London’s Ealing station, unfolds her now tattered message, and hold it up for homeward-bound commuters to see. “Come home Jim” reads her poignant sign—a message she has displayed at the station for hours every evening and into the night for the past seven years.

In chapter 1, Mary leaves the station for her 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. shift at NightLine, a crisis hotline where she began volunteering after seeing a notice on the supermarket community bulletin board. She hesitated for a time, recalling her mother’s words: “You can’t help anyone until you can help yourself” but eventually reasoned, “If it was only people beyond the need for help who offered it, then surely there would be nobody working for charities at all.” At Nightline, readers meet Ted, who manages the crisis line, and two other volunteers, Kit and Olive. As Mary takes her first call, a male voice on the other end of the line, unexpectedly announces, “I wanted to say that I missed you.” Sure that the man on the other end of the line is Jim, the love of her life with whom she had spent six years before his mysterious disappearance seven years ago, Mary bumbles to transfer the call to her cell phone, losing him in the process.

In chapter 2, 2005, readers meet Jim as he meets Mary for the first time in Belfast. Jim, a physician, is attending a conference in a hotel where Mary is an event planner. Just after she spills scalding coq au vin down the front of her white shirt a half hour before a wedding reception is to begin and glances up to make sure no one has seen her, Jim asks from the doorway, “You alright there?” As a plum tomato drops from her left breast, he stifles a laugh. He picks up a fallen chicken thigh, eats it, and the two are immediately drawn to one another.

As the novel proceeds, Greaves alternates chapters set in the present (2018) with chapters set in the past, the latter progressing chronologically from 2005 to 2011—the six years that Jim and Mary spend living together in London. To avoid confusion, each chapter is clearly marked with the year. Readers meet Mary’s family in Ireland and Jim’s parents in London as the pair spend blissful days but as Jim’s haunted past is slowly revealed. In the 2018 chapters, readers meet Alice, a young journalist about to lose her job as newspapers struggle during the years of online and TV news. Her only chance of retaining her job is to come up with an impressive story, and then she encounters Mary at Ealing station and decides to volunteer for Nightline, all the while concealing her identity as a reporter. Mysterious calls from Jim continue, and Alice determines to find the missing love of Mary’s life.

With social media coming into play and a cross country manhunt, Abbie Greaves delivers a lively and touching novel about people in need of human connection. In the end, she also delivers a satisfying ending.
Thanks to Book Club Girls, a Facebook book group, and to NetGalley for providing an advance reader copy.

Abbie Greaves has quite the way of tugging on your heartstrings. After reading and loving the Silent Treatment last spring, I knew I needed to read Anywhere for you, and I’m so glad I did!

Anywhere for You follows Mary O’Connor and her decades-long search for the love of her life. Frequent commuters at the Ealing Broadway station know Mary. She sits vigil there every day with her sign “Come Home Jim”. While others pass her by, young journalist Alice asks Mary to tell her story. Years before Mary met Jim, a charismatic doctor who whisked her off her feet. The two had many years together, and then one day he disappeared without explanation. Alice, intrigued by Mary, and in need of a good story for work, decides to investigate Jim’s disappearance. But what Alice finds is more than she bargained for.

Like The Silent Treatment, Anywhere for You is my favorite style of fiction, a beautiful narrative with a hint of mystery that slowly reveals itself. The story jumps back and forth between present-day Mary, struggling with Jim’s disappearance, Alice investigating, and Mary and Jim together, starting with their meeting in Belfast years before.

I felt myself clinging to the page. I just had to know what happened to Jim! I became so invested in the characters and their everyday struggles. I needed to know everything would be alright for them. I absolutely loved this beautiful story, and I highly recommend it to those who love character-driven stories!

Thank you to William Morrow and Netgalley for the review copy. All opinions are my own.

I received a copy of Anywhere for You from NetGalley. I started this book last night, and I tried my hardest to stay awake long enough to finish it-- it is THAT good! The characters are all dealing with major issues (abandonment, depression, death). Mary is still looking for her partner Jim who left seven years ago, and she waits every night at the train station for him. After a video of Mary in the train station goes viral, Alice, a newspaper reporter decides to write a story about what had happened to Jim. The story goes back and forth between current time, focusing on the hunt for Jim, and the past, telling Mary and Jim's beautiful love story. While the story is heart-breaking, it also offers lessons on forgiveness, friendship, and hope. Mary, Jim, Alice, and the other characters in the story will stay with me for a long time.

A beautiful, poignant story about lost love. The story begins with a woman named Mary who holds a daily vigil after her boyfriend disappears, by standing outside Ealing Broadway station holding a sign that says "Come Home Jim". A reporter decides to find out what her story is and gets to know Mary and others in her life along the way. Anywhere for You is a thoughtful and well written story, and I like that it talks about important issues that are often swept under the rug, but I found it to be a slow burn that I needed to be in the right kind of mood to read.

Thank you to NetGalley, William Morrow and Custom House for allowing me to read an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

What happened to Jim? This novel tells the story of Mary, a woman who stands at the railroad station nightly with a sign that asks Jim to come back from wherever he is after he left her. The story jumps between 2005 when Mary met Jim, to 2018 in London, where Mary has started to make new friends at a volunteer mental health hotline. Without giving away any spoilers, the issue of mental health is central to the story, as well as the themes of abandonment, friendship and trust. I really liked the book and would recommend to all fiction readers. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

Where is Jim? Every day Mary O'Connor goes to Ealing Broadway station with a sign saying "Come Home Jim". Alice is a reporter and asks Mary about her story. Mary tells Alice of her love affair with Jim and how he disappeared and she waits every day for him. This was a heartbreaking book. It deals with a lot of emotional topics and as strangers become friends it becomes a story of love and hope. I received an advanced readers copy and all opinions are my own.

ANYWHERE FOR YOU – Abbie Greaves
William Morrow
ISBN: 978-0-06-293387-4
April 6, 2021
Contemporary Fiction

London, England

For the past seven years, Mary O’Connor has haunted the Ealing Broadway station each night as she stands on the platform holding a sign. The sign says simply, “Come Home Jim.” Jim is Mary’s former partner and he disappeared suddenly seven years ago. Mary hopes that he or someone will see the sign and he will indeed come back to her. Most everyone shuffles past Mary, not wanting to meet her eye or acknowledge her. One night, Alice, a reporter at the Ealing Bugle, spots Mary. Alice wants to know Mary’s story about Jim. But she must be careful how she approaches Mary. Alice decides to volunteer at the same crisis center where Mary volunteers when she’s not working or standing on the platform holding the sign.

ANYWHERE FOR YOU shifts between the present day of 2018 and back to thirteen years ago when Mary and Jim first met. They felt connected to each other and were soon living together in London. While their life appeared good, deep down, Jim had issues with depression and drinking. Mary tries to be his savior, but does he want to be saved? The years move along as we learn more about the relationship between Mary and Jim. Seven years ago he walked out. Why did he leave? What happened to him? Meanwhile, Alice decides that she wants to find Jim. With the help of Kit, a man she also met at the crisis center, they take off in search of the missing man—but without Mary knowing what they’re doing.

ANYWHERE FOR YOU is a haunting tale that will pull readers in. Mary is a sympathetic character that readers will grow to care for. She doesn’t know Alice is a reporter. If she had, she probably wouldn’t have talked so freely to Alice. We learn that Jim loves Mary, but he is slowly drifting away from her, and Mary doesn’t see it because she is bent on saving him from his demons. Will Alice find Jim, and if so, will she bring him back to Mary? As for Alice, the road trip in the enclosed confines of the car has her and Kit growing closer. Will there be a romance blooming between them by the end?

If you love a well-written and emotional tale that has you wanting to find out the answers to the questions surrounding Mary and Jim, plus Alice’s pursuit, then you will enjoy ANYWHERE FOR YOU. Be sure to grab this when it goes on sale in April 2021.

Patti Fischer
Romance Reviews Today

This will post in April at Romance Reviews Today: http://romrevtoday.com/index.htm

Told from alternate timelines of the “past” and “present,” Anywhere For You is the story of Mary and the love of her life, Jim, who has disappeared. Every day for the last seven years, Mary has stood at Ealing Broadway Station holding a sign that says, “Come home, Jim,” in the hopes that he will see her sign and come back to her and resume the wonderful life they had together.

One day, Alice comes across Mary at the station, seeing her having a breakdown, screaming, and swearing at passers-by to give her some space. Alice convinces Mary to have a drink and take a break with her, and Alice listens to Mary’s story. Alice soon comes to find that she has a lot in common with Mary, as someone from her life disappeared years ago as well, and Alice vows to help Mary find the answers she deserves and needs to get on with her life.

This book showcases mental illness and the lengths we go to in order to hide our deepest secrets, not only from the world around us, but from ourselves. While this book covers difficult topics, it also shows that it is okay to be yourself and to be vulnerable at times too, and that it is okay to ask for and seek help when you need it.
The premise of this story is what drew me to want to read it. I blasted through the first half of this book, trying to figure out what happened to Jim, if he would come back to Mary, and if they would live happily ever after. But I soon realized that this was an extremely slow-paced story and I got burnt out quickly with the repetitiveness of Mary missing Jim, singing his high praises for how great he was, couldn’t believe he just disappeared, etc. I ended up skimming most of the second half because nothing seemed to be new information to progress the story, it was all just a reiteration of what I already knew.

I also thought it was strange that the “present” timeline started off from Mary’s perspective until Alice was introduced. Then, it switched to Alice’s perspective for the rest of the story. The “past” was continuously from Mary’s perspective. I did find myself switching which timeline I was most drawn to as well. I started off really enjoying the past and learning the history between Mary and Jim until one particular event and the way the characters reacted to it. I was so turned off to the characters at that point, though I can’t say I really liked any of them to start with. From then on, I was more interested in the present timeline and trying to figure out what happened to Jim.

Finally, around the 85% mark, the story started to become more interesting again. I was finally going to learn what happened to Jim, why he disappeared, and what was going to happen to Mary when she finally knew what happened, too. But I was so disappointed in the resolve of this book. The ending just didn’t make up for the slow build that I drudged my way through. It felt almost like a cop out for what could have been a great ending.

Overall, I give this book 3 stars. I didn’t love it, but I think it covered some hard topics that are important to talk about. I believe the characters showed some personal growth that they recognized in themselves by the end, too, which is also important. I think the potential for this book was great, I just would have liked to see it executed a little differently.

Mary meets Jim by chance and start a life together. After 7 years together he disappears without a word. Mary waits every day with a sign at train station for him. In a chance encounter with Mary, Alice tries to unravel in the mystery. It is set in England.

Written in a dual time format between the past and present, it is tale of chance meetings and human behavior.

I did not enjoy this book. It was long and boring. It seemed to lack depth. I only finished the book to find out what happened. It was a charming story just one not for me.

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC

I wanted to like this book, but I just couldnt finish it. Whether it was the writing style or just my mood at the time, I couldnt get engaged in the story and was unable to read more than a third.

3.5 stars

I received a copy of Anywhere for You from NetGalley for an honest review. I wish to thank NetGalley, William Morrow, and Abbie Greaves for the opportunity to read this book.

First off, the premise of this book is awesome. But, the book just didn't do it for me. Maybe it was reading it during the one-year anniversary of the start of COVID. It started very slowly and didn't really pick up for me until about half-way through the book.

I really enjoyed the character development and the storyline, but something just wasn't "it" for me. I enjoyed the book, but I think that I wanted more and it just wasn't delivered.

Lukewarm recommendation - I liked the book, but I didn't love it!