After You
(Me Before You #2)
by Jojo Moyes
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Publication Date: September 29th 2015
Publisher:
Pamela Dorman Books
Pages: 368
ISBN:
9780525426592
Genre: Fiction | Chick-Lit | Contemporary
Source: Netgalley
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How do you move on after losing the person you loved? How do you build a life worth living?
Louisa
Clark is no longer just an ordinary girl living an ordinary life. After
the transformative six months spent with Will Traynor, she is
struggling without him. When an extraordinary accident forces Lou to
return home to her family, she can’t help but feel she’s right back
where she started.
Her body heals, but Lou herself knows that she
needs to be kick-started back to life. Which is how she ends up in a
church basement with the members of the Moving On support group, who
share insights, laughter, frustrations, and terrible cookies. They will
also lead her to the strong, capable Sam Fielding—the paramedic, whose
business is life and death, and the one man who might be able to
understand her. Then a figure from Will’s past appears and hijacks all
her plans, propelling her into a very different future. . . .
For
Lou Clark, life after Will Traynor means learning to fall in love
again, with all the risks that brings. But here Jojo Moyes gives us two
families, as real as our own, whose joys and sorrows will touch you
deeply, and where both changes and surprises await.
After You is
quintessential Jojo Moyes—a novel that will make you laugh, cry, and
rejoice at being back in the world she creates. Here she does what few
novelists can do—revisits beloved characters and takes them to places
neither they nor we ever expected. (Goodreads)
As soon as I discovered there would be a sequel to
Me Before You, I knew I had to read the book, and
After You quickly became one of my most anticipated reads for 2015. I was super curious to see what happens for Lou after the events in the end of
Me Before You. I went into the book almost blind, having completely avoided most of the summaries for the book. I didn't know what to expect, and honestly, I didn't know if I was going to enjoy the book considering that it would be missing one of the things I loved so very much in the first book. In the end, I did enjoy the book, albeit in a different way than the first book, but I did still found it to be a very enjoyable read.
I started reading this book just moments after rereading
Me Before You, which I was already a complete emotional mess over. Because of this, the first few chapters were hard for me to read, and I found myself in tears pretty quickly. I couldn't help but relate and sympathize with Lou for her grief, which was so much stronger than I expected it to be. I can't say that I wouldn't have handled things the same way she did. But Lou is such a really great character, one that I've loved since I first met her in
Me Before You, and in the story we watch her learn to live with that grief, and to also find herself again.
Almost all of the characters that I fell in love with in the first book are back in this sequel. I absolutely adored Lou's family in the first book, and they are even more wonderful this time around. I loved being able to check in with them, and also with the Traynor's, to see what they were up to and how they had learned to cope.
While there are some parts in the book that were super hard to read, ones that had my heart breaking in two, there are also some moments that are going to have you rolling on the floor laughing as well. That's another thing that I loved about the book, it really had me feeling all the different emotions as I turned the pages, and I love when a book does that!
Overall; I really enjoyed the book, but in a completely different way than I enjoyed
After You. There was obviously something missing from the second book that I loved so very much in the first book, and it was hard not having that there. But despite that, I really enjoyed the book. I'm super excited to read more by Moyes as soon as possible, and I have the audio book of
One Plus One, just waiting for me to start it.
