Book review: Anything for Her by G J Minett

Publication date: ebook 30th November 2017 paperback 22 March 2018

I received an ecopy of this novel from publisher Bonnier Zaffre via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review

Book description

You'd do anything for the one that got away . . . wouldn't you?

When Billy Orr returns home to spend time with his dying sister, he bumps into his ex-girlfriend Aimi, the love of his life. He might not have seen her in eleven years, but Billy's never forgotten her. He'd do anything for her then, and he'd do anything for her now.
When Aimi tells him that she wants to escape her abusive husband, Billy agrees to help her fake her own death. But is she still the Aimi that Billy remembers from all those years ago?
Once Aimi disappears, Billy has to face the possibility that perhaps she had different reasons for disappearing - reasons that might be more dangerous than she's led him to believe . . .

Sometimes trusting the one you love is the wrong thing to do.

My review:

This is the second book I have read by this author, having requested the title partly based on the description of the book and partly due to the fact that I enjoyed his previous work. 
The concept that someone would do something for their first love solely down to the fact that they still had feelings for that person kind of intrigued me.  How far would you go to try and rekindle a relationship with them?  And would that person feel the same way?
Billy and Aimi dated for a while when they were teenagers, and their relationship came to an abrupt end when Aimi's parents divorced and she was forced to move away from the area to live with her father. Now 11 years later, Aimi is married to the son of an influential local "businessman" with fingers in many pies, many of them rather dubious.  Billy is back in the area visiting his sister who has some difficult news to share with him, and bumps into Aimi in the local supermarket where they swap phone numbers.  From there on in Billy finds himself getting in deeper and deeper with Aimi and her in-laws, not really knowing whose version of recent events to believe.  I felt very mistrusting of Aimi yet the pressures her family were putting on Billy made me wonder whether maybe she was genuine.  She recruits him to help her fake her own death and before long questions are being asked of Billy that even he cannot answer, despite him being heavily involved.  Things just don't add up for anyone - not even Billy. 
Billy seems a very troubled young man, and I wondered whether he perhaps had signs of autism or something similar.  Aimi certainly underestimated him, as did a few other characters.  He has a very methodical way of dealing with life which is probably why he was such a whizz kid with computers - his mind works in a logical process like a computer and this only helps him deal with the fallout of Aimi's disappearance.  It may take him a while to work it out, but slowly but surely he gets there and ultimately has his own solution to the whole situation. 
The ending surprised me - while I was expecting some kind of extreme action to conclude things it certainly was not what the author had in store for Billy and Aimi and their families. 
Once again I enjoyed the author's work and I found it a very quick read. I definitely recommend it.

Find out more about the author at www.grahamminett.com