Friday, January 1, 2016

After You by Jojo Moyes




What They Say....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.



What I Say....I loved Me Before You.  I actually read it on a flight to Hawaii and embarrassed myself by sobbing uncontrollably in front of an airplane full of strangers.  But I think I was one of the few that wasn't clamoring for a follow up book.  

But once I saw it had been written, how could I resist?  I do love Jojo Moyes, and I'd read anything she's written.  

This one wasn't my favorite though.  I think I would have rather left the story at the end of Me Before You.  In my mind, Louisa had gone on to live a meaningful, daring life that Will challenged her to.

To see that she is back to living a completely uneventful life was a pretty big letdown.  It was actually depressing me.

The introduction of Lily is a new twist, and her story was really heartbreaking.  I don't want to give any spoilers, but when she was close to rock bottom, and her father's friend appeared to help her, I kept thinking, "Please don't be a bad guy, please don't be a lech."  Of course he was.  I actually became more invested in Lily's story than Lou's.  I almost think the book could have been written from her viewpoint.

This was a good book, and I'm glad that Louisa found peace.  But what did you think?  Are you glad there was a sequel?  Or would have been happy with the ending of Me Before You?



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