Book Synopsis:
Some love stories change us for ever.For the last seven years, Mary O’Connor has waited for her first love. Every evening she arrives at Ealing Broadway station and stands with a sign which simply says: ‘Come Home Jim’.Commuters might pass her by without a second thought, but Mary isn’t going anywhere. Until an unexpected call turns her world on its head.It will take the help of a young journalist called Alice, and a journey across the country for Mary to face what happened all those years ago, and to finally answer the question: where on earth is Jim?
My Review:
I absolutely loved this author’s debut novel, The Silent Treatment so have eagerly been waiting for more from her. I was definitely not disappointed as I thought this was a beautiful, poignant and heart warming read that will be staying with me. I raced few it in a couple a days which is no mean feat when you have three kids.
The story follows Mary in two time lines one in 2005 as she starts a love affair with the charming Jim and one in 2018 as she struggles to cope with Jim’s disappearance. I quickly warmed to Mary and felt a lot of sympathy towards her, especially with other people’s reactions to her station vigil. I often wished I could reach into the book and give her a hug while simultaneously wanting to slap Jim for doing this to her. I felt very protective of her and wanted to keep reading to see what happened next.
There were lots of different plot lines running through the book and I soon found myself utterly absorbed in the story. The story isn’t particularly fast paced but there was always enough going on to keep my interest and I soon found myself very involved in the story. It seemed very realistic as if this scenario could happen in real life, to people I might know which I thought was very clever.
The ending was very interesting, not at all how I was expecting it to end and I thought it very brave of the author to end it this way. I can’t wait to read more from this talented author.
Huge thanks to Laura from Century publishing for inviting me onto the blog tour and for my copy of this book.
About The Author:
Abbie Greaves studied at Cambridge University before working in a literary agency for a number of years. She was inspired to write her first novel, The Silent Treatment, after reading a newspaper article about a boy in Japan who had never seen his parents speak to one another before.Abbie lives in Brighton with her boyfriend.
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