This really did not tick any of my boxes, too descriptive, not that gripping and I didn’t really connect with the characters. Disappointed.

An enjoyable, if somewhat predictable, read. This book is very well written and has well developed characters. The plot is good but not an original concept so not really any twists that make you gasp. That said, the book is still very good.

The worm turns

Billy Orr returns to his home town to “babysit” his older sister, who has just been diagnosed with a serious illness, while her husband Matthew takes off to the States on business. A chance encounter with Aimi, an old flame from his schooldays triggers a chain of events which will not end well – but who will be the one to suffer most?

This novel is categorised as a psychological thriller and is a slow burner. The opening chapters are quite normal and everyday but build to a crescendo. It is quite possible to understand how Billy could have been drawn into a situation involving a powerful, local family, the police and Albanian hoods.

All the characters are well fleshed out and realistic and, in particular, the dialogue is superb. It pulls the story along and the reader with it. The descriptions of the various locations are also no less well formed. My sole criticism is of the epilogue which to my mind was unnecessary and rather out of place. However, it did not detract from my enjoyment of a very worthy 5-star story. It’s superb and was devoured in one sitting on a dreary, damp Saturday.

mr zorg

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review.

If you want to know about Ashford or St. Pancras, then this book is for you.I like having detail but there can be too much detail and that's what I thought this book had.
It would have been nice to have had more story line and yes you have to have some description but this was too much.
It was not gripping, quite boring at times and I just could not finish it . A real shame this book let me down.

Most of us have someone in our lives that we'd do anything for. For Billy it is his ex-girlfriend and first love, Aimi. Years after she left him and moved away, he still never really moved on.


When Billy goes to visit his ailing sister and returns to the town he grew up in, the last thing he expects is to see Aimi in the supermarket. When she asks to see him again, even though he knows his sister will disapprove, he just can't say no. When she shows him the bruises her husband has left her with and when he hears her horror stories of how her step family treat he, he's devastated. Knowing full well that he still loves her, Aimi asks him a question, one she says only he can help her with. Will Billy help Aimi fake her own death.


But there are reasons that Billy's sister has no love for Aimi and she knows their parents death has left him vulnerable. Is Aimi really running from an abusive relationship or is there more to her story than meets the eye?


GJ Minett brings a story as quietly sad as it is thrilling. Billy is just about managing to function as an adult until his childhood sweetheart regresses him to the vulnerable state he found himself in after his parents death. Even though his sister is ill, it's Aimi that he puts first. Throughout the story you'll be mad at him for being so blind but also pity his complete innocence. Anything for Her has a great punch for an ending and I never knew quite where it was going until the final pages. If you're a fan of B A Paris or you just love a good thriller then this will be right up your street.

I love a suck you in, engrossing psychological thriller and Anything for Her sounded like something right up my alley. The premise is intriguing and I was excited to read it, but it didn't take long before I was wondering if I had opened the wrong book. Maybe I missed something, but I didn't find anything remotely thrilling about this book. I will say that the author does have a large vocabulary, but in this case, that translated into a lengthy, extremely wordy tale that was just too easy to set aside for something more interesting. In fact, I did set it aside numerous times, only coming back to it out of sheer determination to finish. That, and an almost obsessive need to figure out what everyone was raving about. Sadly, I didn't find it. There is a bit of mystery, but it wasn't all that hard to figure out and the only part I found remotely chilling was young Billy's reaction to the death of his parents. Other than that, I didn't much care for any of the characters or what happened to them. In the end, the only thing I took away with this one was several hours reading time that I can't get back.

I rarely give five stars. But WOW! This story opens with childhood sweethearts meeting again as adults. Billy is back visiting his sick sister. The characters are believable. The plot moves briskly. A battered wife plots to escape her husband, but nothing is what it seems. The final ten percent wraps this story up in a way I never saw coming. Excellent. I will search others by this author!

Lots of twists and turns in this well written book. Keeps you hooked in and wanting to read more.

I really liked the concept of this book, but sadly it didn’t quite live up to my expectations.
I thought that the main character of Billy, who, whilst supposed to be deeply flawed, was generally useless and unlikeable. I didn’t even care about him enough to want to give him a big shake (which he desperately needed...).
The book could’ve been a lot shorter and still have obtained the same objectives.
I did like the style of writing, the way in which the author took us back and forth in time, I felt that this worked and I have giving Mr Minnet credit for this in my rating of this book.
I also enjoyed the character Mia, her protectiveness towards her brother felt real, and their relationship, from her point of view, could be understood.
Thank you to NetGalley for a free Kindle copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I enjoyed the book, though it could have probably been a bit shorter. I liked the flashbacks and alternating narrators. I really enjoyed the twists.

Billy Orr has had a troubled start in life, his parents committed suicide when he was just thirteen after his mother’s ALS became progressively worse.

But over a decade on and he is a successful London website developer running a business with friends. His only reason for returning to his home town is his sister Mia.

When Mia calls Billy and asks him to come over as she’s sick, he fears the worst. Mia doesn’t have ALS, her prognosis sadly is even more devastating.

Billy does his best to be there for his older Sister, after all she has always been there for him. Even accompanying her to the local supermarket where he bumps into an old girlfriend Aimi.

Aimi was Billy’s first true love before her parents split and she had to move away leaving him heartbroken.

Billy tells himself that he’s moved on but he knows that if Aimi asked him he’d do anything for her.

Anything at all.

So when she texts him and asks to meet, he jumps at the chance. Once she asks for his help Billy finds it hard to refuse. But realises it doesn’t matter what she asks him because he’ll do anything for her....

A great thriller with many twists and turns.

After being obsessed with his childhood girlfriend, when after a chance encounter she asks for help he doesn't hesitate, no matter what she needs him to do.

A gripping read

Well once again G.J. Minett has demonstrated that he knows not only the ingredients required for great story-telling but also when to whisk the mixture slowly and when to turn the speed up, the result a story that may make you wonder if you should have caught on a little earlier but ultimately leave you feeling satiated.
So what’s it all about? Well Billy Orr is back home visiting his older sister, Mia who is ill. He stays on the train at Ashford International – as Billy says the name brings out the cynic in him.

‘It came across as just that little bit too desperate to impress, as if seeing to confer upon the place a status, a sense of glamour and mystery which was never entirely warranted by the town itself. Even the positioning of the word felt lie an afterthought, almost a pose if you like.’

Right from this point, in other words very early on, I liked Billy, saying to myself, he thinks the way I think.
Billy is home in Rye to keep Mia company while her husband Matthew travels for work and although they’ve both assured him that Mia will be ok, the bond between brother and sister is especially close given that Mia, nine years his senior, looked after Billy following the sudden deaths of their parents when he was still in his teens.

The story elegantly shifts backwards and forwards in time, from the present day to an event in 2002, thirteen years before the heart of the story. In the present Mia and Billy go to the supermarket in Tenterden and he’s browsing the cereal aisle when who should he see but his first love Aimi. Now it is clear almost immediately that Mia was not impressed by this chance meeting but she’s content to let them have a five-minute chat, her about her marriage to the son of the local ‘Mr Big’ but she knows that her leaving Billy as a teenager had broken his heart and their closeness has translated into a slightly overbearing attitude as to Billy’s well-being. Aimi wants to talk to Billy but wants him to keep it a secret and sadly the poor bloke doesn’t realise that he should walk away without a backwards glance.

I’m not actually going to say anything else about the plot except to say that the seemingly disparate pieces of information are anything but. I think the author must have had a massive wall of sticky notes to keep track of all the information! Not that this book is complex to read, far from it, but neither is it packed full of irrelevant details, the extra words only ever coming in to paint an evocative scene, a sense of place or time.

Then the clouds came scudding across like locust swarms, treacle black, thick as molasses chasing the light from the sky and squatting over the West End like some malevolent entity. Nature’s literal five o’clock shadow.
The people are well-drawn the ‘at home’ scenes between Mia, Matthew and Billy only too believable, far more so I think than those books where families sit around having witty chats with one another – here there are several points where it is all too obvious that manners keep the family together but their true selves are at times somewhere entirely elsewhere. There are people to hate, people to wonder at, people who remind you of yourself or others and at some point you are going to realise some of these people are hiding something, what is the question?

I am very grateful to the publishers who provided me with a copy of Anything For Her, this unbiased review is my thanks to them and to Graham for providing me with another brilliant read. If you haven’t read this author’s previous work, I would urge you to do so each one so different yet at the same time the complex plots are effortlessly read leaving a sense of deep satisfaction.

From the moment I started this book I knew it was going to be good. The first few pages had me gripped and I had to read on as I needed to know what was going to happen next. From a chance meeting with his ex–girlfriend to staying at his sister’s house Anything For Her is a tension roller-coaster with plenty of bumps in the journey and a memorable twist. I really could not put this book down and finished it over the course of a few days. This book did not disappoint and the ended was the real icing on the cake. I am looking forward to reading more from this author in the future and I would really recommended this book to anyone who loves this type of genre - its a great holiday read too.

I did enjoy this book, it’s a great idea for a story. I must admit to getting a little lost at one point but persisted and enjoyed it.

I enjoyed reading this book but can’t give it 5 or 4 stars as it isn’t outstanding. The tension was well executed but I guessed where the story was going quite early on. It isn’t a book that I will find myself thinking about for weeks to come but nevertheless it has merit.

Anything for her is the story of Billy, a guy who is spending some time with his sister when he bumps into his ex-girlfriend of 11 years, Aimi.
Aimi tells him about her abusive relationship and asks him to help her disappear..

This was a really good story with plenty of twists and shocking moments! I was hooked from the start!

Billy and Aimi were childhood sweethearts but that relationship was curtailed when her family moved away, leaving Billy bereft. But he got on with his life and moved away himself to work in technology. Aimi herself has also moved on and got married to another of their school friends and member of a prominent family. We begin our story 11 years after Billy and Aimi last saw each other when Billy returns home to see his sister who is ill. They bump into each other in a supermarket and swap numbers; both eager for a catch up. They meet on the beach the next day and Aimi tells Billy a sad story; how she is desperate to escape her abusive relationship and asks him to help her. Obviously, being the unrequited love of his life, Billy agrees to help her, even when he learns that her plan is to fake her own death. Soon after the event, Billy starts to realise that all may not have been as Aimi told him. But who to believe, the love he lost eleven years ago or what appears to be before his face now? Has he just made the biggest mistake of his life and, more importantly, what does he do next?
Well, this was a rather convoluted book. We have what is happening in the now ticking along quite nicely but we also hear from several unidentified characters in the future from where we originally started. The two timelines eventually merging at the end of the book when the truth eventually comes out. There are also a few flashbacks to the past to add detail and explanation for some of what is happening in the present / future. The ride to get from start to finish is also paved nicely with secrets lies and more than its fair share of duplicitous behaviour. We also hear from several of the main characters so it is really a book to read when you have a decent chunk of time to dedicate to it rather than a dip in and out kind of read.
Characterisation was excellent. Even though I wanted to slap Billy several times through for being what I saw as stupid, I could really believe his reasons for doing what he did. He was a bit of a complex character and we got to see more of what shaped him in his own childhood flashbacks. Aimi was also very well written but I can't divulge too much of either her or Billy here to qualify this due to spoilers. Other characters fitted in nicely with the roles they played, especially Billy's sister Mia who tries to keep him on the straight and narrow.
What did fall a bit flat with this book for me was all the time switching and different character perspectives which made this book a little bit to complex to be completely enjoyable. I felt that I had to work a bit harder to get to the end than perhaps I would have liked. This is the first book by this author that I have read so it may just be that I am not suited to his style as a reader. I don;t know. I do like to be challenged as a reader but perhaps not quite to the extent as I was here. That said, I did battle through to the end and was mostly rewarded for my efforts with an explanation that, on the whole made sense and was credible.
All in all, a tough read that I am glad I battled through as it left me mostly satisfied at the end. My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

A long uphill road that leads to almost nothing….

This is the best I can describe about this book. The story is simple Billy meets ex-girlfriend, Aimi after 11 years, she wants his help to disappear, away from an abusive husband. He helps and then discovers nothing is as it seems.

The plot line by G. J. Minett was excellent, the barebones of the story sounded so exciting. But unfortunately the delivery fails. This is my first book by the author, and I was left wondering if I should read his previous books, if this was his best work.

I started reading a few pages and I found myself struggling to connect to the story. I stopped, life is too short for books where the words are too long. But I picked this book up again, as everyone started gushing about it. And I still struggled. But I found an easy way to read this time, I skipped and skimmed and I reached the end. It was like playing hopscotch…

The characters were all very one dimensional. The author has tried to make Billy complex with flashbacks of childhood and with him not taking his meds in the present for some psychiatric issues, which I never understood fully, but he still came across as weird. I was more creeped out by Billy than the real culprits.

The story is written in 3 different time lines 2002, 2015, and 2016. It was so confusing to go back and forth and I lost the flow of story.

The sister, Mia was a ray of sunshine and hope in the book which went nowhere, but she had a small part to play. I liked the ex girlfriend, Aimi only for a fact that she was cunning enough to see the opportunity to use Billy. Billy’s brother-in-law had an explanation for everything which was flimsy and didn’t make a good reason at the end. The rest of the characters are just there, standing and waiting for the author to say ‘Action‘ and unfortunately, he never does.

G. J Minett has made a good effort to bring suspense to the story. And don’t get me wrong, it worked, but it was not maintained in the entire story. Whenever, there was curiosity rising, the author wrote long-winded explanation behind that one line of suspense. Luckily, I learnt to skip entire paragraphs and get to to the following suspense. This felt like the time, the battery of my car had to be jumpstarted to make it run. This made the book a staccato read.

At the end of story, I realized that the suspense formula is based on love and money, and the writers employ this formula using different chemicals. But I wish they understood not all chemicals react with a bang, some don’t react at all…

For me personally, every book that G.J Minett releases is better than the previous one so his third offering is definitely his best book so far! I made the unfortunate mistake of starting it late one night and couldn’t put it down, eventually falling asleep and having that “kindle hitting me on the nose thing”! Next morning I was desperate to continue reading and hid myself away until I had finished….And Wow! What an ending! This is one seriously twisted book!

From the start my heart went out to Billy. Orphaned at the age of 13 by the heartbreaking deaths of his parents, he is brought up by older sister Mia and her husband Matthew. When he is asked by Matthew to return home for a visit he realises something is seriously wrong but during his stay his spirits are lifted by a chance meeting with the ex he has never forgotten and Billy’s life once more has purpose. But things aren’t always as they seem as Billy is about to find out.

The opening prologue was so intriguing that I was gripped straight away by the mysterious Aimi, who obviously had something to hide but what? I developed such a soft spot for Billy after all that he had been through that my senses were overwhelmed and on high alert right from the start as I did not trust Aimi one little bit! But even I had no idea of where this plot was heading and why! This was a twisty and intelligent read, skilfully written with well crafted and rounded characters. G.J Minett weaves a tale full of lies and deceit, playing a game of manipulation to rival Aimi, with the perfect ending!

If you’ve never read anything by this author before, give yourself a treat over the festive period and be prepared to lose some sleep as you won’t be able to put it down!