Julie's Review: After You

Author: JoJo Moyes
Series: Me Before You #2
Publication Date: September 29, 2015
Publisher: Pam Dorman Books
Pages: 386
Obtained: purchased
Genre:  Contemporary Fiction
Rating: 4.75/5.0
Bottom Line: A wonderful sequel
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Summary: 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.” 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.~amazon.com

 Review: After You is a wonderful sequel that let's readers catch up with Lou after Will's death. It isn't easy to see where Lou's at. She's lost. She's out of touch with her parents since her part in Will's death. She's working at an airport bar and then laying awake wondering what she's doing with her life. It isn't until she has an accident that sends her life on the right path. It wakes her up a little bit but it's the people she meets that end up pulling her up from the abyss.

 Lou is trying to get her life back together but Will was such a powerful force in her life, that she's not sure how to go on without him. He wanted her to live her life to the fullest and ensured that she could do that but that's not really Lou. She didn't live an adventurous life before W and she's not sure how to do it now. Sure, she traveled but doing that by yourself can get weary as well. To satisfy her father, Louisa joins a group called Moving On that helps people cope with the death of a loved one.

While I do think that it helped her in some ways, it really was the entrance of Lily and Sam that brought her to the surface again. Sam showed her that she could love again and Lily showed her that it's possible to truly care about someone even if they don't have any true ties to you.

I didn't bawl like I did with Me Before You but I did tear up a few separate times. I laughed a lot though because life is absurd, funny, and painful. Lou still has her wicked sense of humor and her parents crack me up for some reason. Her sister Treen is the one who keeps Lou honest or tries to keep her honest.

I wasn't sure how Ms. Moyes would do a sequel without Will but his spirit lived on in this one. Lou is a great character and it was great to see her grow and find her legs again. I would say more but I don't want to ruin it for you.


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