After You

After You

Jojo Moyes

Genre: Fiction

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.
 
Marcie's Review: I wonder if my feelings for this book were influenced by how much I loved Me Before You?  As always, Moyes' writing flows smoothly and is easy to read; once I re-acquainted myself with the characters and got involved with the story, I didn't want to put the book down.  But.... the story wasn't as gripping as the first book, the romance seemed a bit forced, the drama with the figure from Will's past was a tad unbelievable, and the ending seemed to set the series up for a third book, rather than exist as an ending on its own.  Were my expectations unreasonably high based on the first book?  Yes.....  Am I rating this book higher than I should because I still love Louisa?   Yes.... probably.

Marcie's Rating: 4 stars

Becky's Review:  I didn't think that Me Before You needed a sequel so when I saw this book, I was a little hesitant.  How do you top the emotional roller coaster that the first book was?  The answer is simple, you don't.  BUT this book was still good; not as good as Me Before You but certainly worth reading.  There were times where I was tearing up but nothing like with the first book.  We see as Louisa struggles to move on and get her life going and to make something of herself while grieving for Will.  I was disappointed by where Louisa ended up.  I actually hope that Moyes writes a sequel to this one because I really would like to see where Louisa ends up as she continues to move forward.

Becky's Rating: 4 stars