"You're going to feel uncomfortable in your new world for a bit. But I hope you feel a bit exhilarated, too. Live boldly. Push yourself. Don't settle. Just live well. Just live. Love, Will.
"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 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 Trainer 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 for whom 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 expected."
I know, I know… I did exactly what I said I wouldn’t do and read the sequel to Me Before You very soon after finishing the first book. I know I said I wanted to “sit” with the characters a bit more before I delved into the sequel, but I went to my local library and After You just so happened to be sitting in a prominent place on a display; it kind of seemed meant to be. Mind you, I put off reading it right away and instead opted to read this little number by Tessa Dare instead. That one was a great quick read, however, so it wasn’t very long before it was time to read After You. I had the choice between reading the third book in Dare’s trilogy or diving back into the world created by Jojo Moyes. I opted for Moyes.
Let me start off by saying I had my reservations about a sequel like this. Moyes made it very clear that she wrote this book following the wave of interest and success of her first and the subsequent excitement over the film adaptation (which I have yet to see; I may force my husband to watch it with me this weekend). Books spurred by these fan-driven questions rarely live up to the first. I was nervous about reading After You because I didn’t want it to destroy my enjoyment and remaining “high” from Me Before You. After reading it, however, I will say that I was only slightly right.
I enjoyed Lou a lot less than I did the first time around. I get that she’s grieving for Will, probably dealing with some really serious depression, and her world has changed dramatically after Will’s assisted suicide, but she seemed to change too much – almost to the point where she seemed like a completely different character. Her mannerisms, habits, and even her speech felt different to me. I was hoping to see even a glimmer of the Lou I’d so enjoyed from the first book. While we eventually get to see some of it, I missed her quirkiness and perception of the world. Don’t get me wrong, I can see where Moyes was going with it – losing Will changed Lou’s entire outlook – but the change was so dramatic to the point where I almost didn’t enjoy it. Parts of her life felt like they dragged on far too long, which is probably why this book took me so much longer to finish. Some of it felt rather forced and beaten to death…
Sam, on the other hand, was an excellent character. I wasn’t sure how I was going to feel about having someone take Will’s place because I’d loved Will so much, but I grew to love Sam. He was very caring and so much of what he did endeared him to me. He showed another way of handling grief that provided relief from Lou’s all-consuming depression. Like the Moving On group, he demonstrated that there is more than one way to grieve (and that some ways are healthier than others).
The purpose of the book seemed to be that Moyes wanted to convey an undercurrent/underlying message: grieve, but move on and live. The story sometimes felt more didactic than “for fun” because of this.
Like so many other readers out there, I enjoy pondering what happens to characters after a book ends. Epilogues can provide snippets to guide these imaginings, but some authors take it a step further and pen a sequel. This is what Moyes did. As she said, she wrote this book after receiving an outpouring of interest in what happened after the conclusion of Me Before You. As a result, it sometimes felt as if she was forcing it; like she was trying to answer a million questions asked by fans instead of writing for the characters' sakes. I enjoyed some of the characters (who will remain unnamed because I don’t want to give the plot away), and others were not as organic. There were a lot of rather obvious metaphors (especially with Sam and Lou’s blossoming relationship and the circumstances of their meeting) and some over-the-top situations that lessened my enjoyment because of their heavy-handedness.
I understand and appreciate what Moyes was trying to do and where she was trying to go with this book, but it did not even come close to my enjoyment of Me Before You. Don’t get me wrong, I did like the book (even though the above seems like I’m being critical of it), but the first one in the series was just too big of an act to follow. Parts of this book were sweet, parts were funny and painfully awkward (in an amusing sort of way), but others just didn’t live up to their potential. I liked this book less than Me Before You, but that doesn’t mean I’d warn readers off of it. It’s still worth the read if you’re interested in seeing where Lou ended up. I found her lack of motivation and misplaced priorities to be maddening (I suppose I felt much the same way her family did). Don’t think I’m unsympathetic to Lou’s depression and sense of loss, because I am. I merely think she made poor choices in this sequel and was lucky to have things pan out as they did. Lou’s difference in character from the first to the second book was probably the biggest hurdle for me. I know her life was forever changed after her time with Will, but she felt like a completely different person. I couldn’t connect with her as much as I did before. Overall, the book was well-written and easily readable. While I had some difficulties connecting with Lou and one or two other supporting characters, I enjoyed Sam very much. I didn’t understand why so much time was spent on Lou’s current job, but it began to feel a little bit unnecessary and excessive - we get it, it sucks and she has to wear a terrible uniform. As a follow up book, this was fine. I still like the author’s style. If this were a standalone book, however, I don’t know if would have been so forgiving.
Side note: I did find a couple of typos in this book. One was a quotation mark where it should not have been, the other was "th" instead of "the" toward the latter half of the book. I caught these errors without looking for them, so I wonder how many others there were without me noticing them.
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