After You

Cover image and summary from Goodreads:

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.

Spoilers for Me Before You!!

I really enjoyed Me Before You, and while I was excited to learn that there was a sequel, I was also kind of apprehensive. Did I want to read about Lou’s life after the events of Me Before You? What if it didn’t live up to my expectations?

I’m happy to say that I enjoyed After You! The story showed me Lou’s life after Will’s death, and the impact of his death on his family, Lou, and her family. The book also takes an unexpected turn, and believe me, it will make you emotional!

I know there are readers who did not enjoy this book: some didn’t like aspects of the plot, some didn’t like the romance between Lou and a new character, some didn’t like the new characters introduced, and there are other reasons I’ve seen as well. I agree with a lot of the things I’ve seen people give as reasons for not liking the book, but at the same time,  I wanted to see Lou grieve, but be able to move on and live her life. How would she move forward?

Reading this, I was sad, happy, annoyed, frustrated, angry, and hopeful. I was angry at Will and missed him, but I was also genuinely interested in what Lou was going to do and if she would be able to move on, and if so, how.

Recommended!