Cover Image: The Ends of the Earth

The Ends of the Earth

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Member Reviews

Thanks Netgalley and the Publisher. I really enjoy this authors books and this was no exception, fantastic storyline, great characters. Loved it.

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A really great story where you follow the story of Mary and Jim and what went wrong. Intro Alice and she wants to try and make it all ok after dealing with her own missing person. So beautiful and lovely all the way through.

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I loved this book!

Abbie has a brilliant way of making ordinary life so compelling.

I read The Ends of the Earth from start to finish over a weekend and at times couldn't put it down.

It's a wonderful story - and a beautiful portrayal of living with someone who is struggling with depression too.

Highly recommend!

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This novel about a woman who, seven years after her lover's disappearance, still keeps a public vigil for him displaying a cardboard sign saying 'come home Jim' was less moving than I'd hoped, as I found it difficult to sympathise with the main characters despite the drawn-out sentimentality and the mental health issues the book attempts to highlight. As a result I found the novel very slow going, especially the first third where I would have given up reading had it not been for the introduction of secondary characters Alice and Kit. I was also curious about the mystery of Jim's disappearance, compelling me to read on to the (rather pat) ending. This one fell flat for me I'm afraid.

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I really enjoyed this story. I loved how the narrative flashed back and forth in time, and between different characters to get a deeper look at the story. I found it a little slow to begin with, but once I got into the story I really enjoyed it.

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I absolutely loved this book! Abbie Greaves has created an engaging mystery, with characters who are easily identifiable with. I liked the way Greaves filled in pieces of the back-story as the book progressed so that her chief protagonist's situation became gradually clearer. The other threads of the story were skilfully woven around the main narrative, so that I found myself desperate to find out what happened to the other characters, too. I had several theories in my head as to how the mystery would be resolved (none of which were correct), but the ending was very satisfying without being twee. Hoping to see more from this author!

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I’ve been dipping in and out of this book as it never had me enthralled. The storyline is enjoyable to follow and highlights the need to address mental health issues especially in men.

What it lacked was anything gripping, it was all quite predictable and came together nicely. Maybe in the summer this would make a perfect summer read but I just needed something a bit more in-depth right now.

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This is a moving story about Mary O’Connor and what leads her to perform a daily vigil at Ealing station with a sign stating ‘Come home Jim’. Jim has been missing for seven years and the story takes us through their relationship and the hunt for Jim by a journalist Alice after a chance meeting with Mary. The story explores mental illness, and the effect this has on men in particular, loneliness, denial and ultimately friendship. Mary is a very likeable protagonist that you are rooting for throughout. The story is well paced and It is an easy, enjoyable read.

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A romantic mystery drama that slowly melts your heart with its wonderful prose and complex characterisations.

The image of Mary sitting waiting with her placard for years filled me with sadness. I had to find out what happened. And I just loved dipping into her past relationship with Jim. What had gone wrong?

Alice is also a great character and I thoroughly enjoyed her journey.

A really engrossing novel which just missed the 5 star category because the pace felt a bit slow in the middle to me but it is a wonderful tale.

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Abbie Greaves this was truly a beautiful book! Written with such love and so many feelings. I adored Mary ( a good feisty Irish lady) and so so wanted her to find the peace and happiness she deserved! Thank you for allowing me to read a book I never wanted to put down! And for giving it the ending it so rightfully deserved

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Ohhhh, this was such a slow burner I was almost on the point of giving up, but I stuck with it and it turns out a good book in the end. I would like to have given it 4 stars but the first third and more was so slow I couldn't.

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I’m not sure what I was expecting from his one but I don’t think it was along the lines of the what the story told! It was a nice book though, with a strong undertone of love and grief, just not in the way I thought it was going to be.

Jim disappeared 7 years ago, and ever since, Mary has sat in the same place at Ealing train station with a sign reading ‘Come Home Jim’. I was drawn in from the start wanting to know were Jim was and why had he left? Mary is a lovely girl, she met Jim and fell in love, after only 4 days they moved in together. She left her family back in Wales and moved to London to Jims flat where they were extremely happy.

The story goes from the present to the past, and in the present Mary is working in a supermarket during the day and for a crisis helpline through the night. She meets someone one night at the train station who also joins the crisis helpline and befriends Mary, and keeps digging for more information on Jim, but is there an ulterior motive? The other characters in the story were well written, and I really liked them. kit who works at the crisis helpline was a favourite of mine through the second half of the story.

This book had me guessing until the end and we find out wha happened and why. There are triggers of depression, alcoholism and grief in the book, which were handled very well.

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We meet Mary whilst standing on Ealing platform with a sign saying 'Come Home Jim', something she has done everyday for the last 7 years. We follow her on her journey to face up to the events that took place 7 years ago and discover her reasons for her train station vigil. The story swaps between time frames including the time Mary and Jim met, the present day, when their relationship started to break down and a few more events in-between.

I loved this book! Everything about it was just brilliant.

The most poignant thing for me was the focus on mental health, and how every single person has their own battles to fight despite seeming okay from the outside. It just felt so real, raw and relevant to real life. So many stories have a fairytale like quality, which whilst sometimes enjoyable, does not portray how most people experience life and it was refreshing to read something so honest. The Ends of the Earth is both heartbreaking and heartwarming all at the same time. The capacity relationships have to influence our lives, both positively and negatively, is a really powerful aspect of the story.

I loved following Mary on her journey of growth and discovery. I liked how it started out with just Mary, but then other characters were introduced as she moved through life. I liked all of the characters and enjoyed seeing how each of their individual character traits influenced their relationships with one another.

It is a 5 out of 5 from me and I would certainly recommend it to others. A story of this nature could end up being quite depressing but the author has done an excellent job of making it real but still really enjoyable.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this electronic advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review.

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The Ends of the Earth is a poignant love story.
Jim disappears one day and his girlfriend - Mary waits every night at the train station with a cardboard sign saying 'Come home Jim.'
One night Mary becomes an internet sensation and this starts the ball rolling - comehomeJim begins to trend and it catches the eye of Alice who is fighting for her journalism job.
The story begins to unravel and side by side we hear of how Alice's father left home and never to returned and the impact this has had on Alice.
Abbie Greaves' characters are believable and her writing flows well.

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Mary sits at Ealing Station everyday, for seven years. She holds a sign: "Come home Jim". Where is he and why he left?

Well written novel about love, sadness, depression, friendship and journey to find self.

Delicate and beautiful.

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A woman stands outside Ealing Station bearing a sign which says, 'Come home, Jim'. She has been doing it every evening for seven years. When she breaks down one evening and shouts at the crowd of commuters to give her some space to breathe, it is captured on a phone and goes viral. A young woman, Alice befriends her and vows to find JIm.. Alice has her own issues to deal with. This is a story about depression and loss and coming to terms with it. It should have been highly emotional because of the subject matter but somehow the characters didn't come to life for me and I was left largely unmoved by their predicaments. I also didn't find the main characters, Mary and Alice all that appealing. It does deal sensitively with the issues of depression and missing persons but there are other books which do so much better. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

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Having read and enjoyed The Silent Treatment, I was excited to read The Ends of the Earth. I actually think this is the better book - it was an enticing plot with wonderful characters, and although emotional, it was extremely charming. Thanks for the ARC!

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Also known as 'Anywhere for you'.

The reviews are true - this is a heart-wrenching, heart-breaking book. It's terribly sad from the very beginning. Poor Mary has spent the last seven years at Ealing Broadway station holding a sign up that says 'Come home, Jim'.

She barely exists. She works in a supermarket by day and volunteers at a helpline at night, spending the time in-between at the station.

But Mary is well-liked by those at the helpline and after she goes social-media-viral one day (shouting at people at the station when it's overcrowded), a journalist and her fellow volunteers start looking into where Jim might be. What happened when he went missing? Where might he have gone?

They don't have a lot to go on, because Mary has never revealed a lot of the details, but they have hope...

For me, this book was on the verge of too heartbreaking. I was so sad for Mary and her wasted years. I was angry at Jim. It does end on a hopeful note. It does have important messages about kindness and helping our fellow humans, about not judging people for the unknown battles they are fighting.

But... but... but... when I ended up crying at the end, it was sad and angry tears more than cathartic ones. I don't know that the story gave me much hope. I just got annoyed with fictional people!

I think this has the potential to go big. It's written well, the characters are lovely and all come to life and it hits hard in the emotions.

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This is a good story, and tackles a difficult topic in an intelligent way, but I just couldn't get involved in the characters, who never really seemed convincing. I enjoyed reading it, however, and I thought that the ending was great. I would recommend it, but with reservations.

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This is a difficult book for me to review through no fault of its own.
It is very emotional and deals with a difficult subject, depression in men, a subject that I can certainly relate to. It is not something to read if you prefer fast paced stories, rather it is a slow, sensitive insight into the effect of depression on men and especially those around them. The details are gradually revealed with flashbacks to the start and continuation of Mary's and Jim's relationship with the associated highs and lows. Alice and Kit's story interweaves in the main theme of finding out what actually happened to Jim and also opens up to their own particular back stories.
A book to read and to think about and how it could apply to those that you know.
I received an advance copy of this book from the publisher through Netgalley, however this did not influence my review of the book.

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