So, I was lucky enough to receive an ARC of AFTER YOU and finally got a chance to finish it!! I was so excited for this because because I absolutely loved ME BEFORE YOU. Well, maybe love isn't the right word as the book left me heartbroken, but it was fantastic. Soooo...here we go. my review...
SYNOPSIS
“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.
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.
PURCHASE
ON AMAZON
First, if you haven't read ME BEFORE YOU
, what are you waiting for?? If you have and you're wondering about AFTER YOU, here are my thoughts.
MY REVIEW
, what are you waiting for?? If you have and you're wondering about AFTER YOU, here are my thoughts.
I really enjoyed this book. I didn't fly through it quite as quickly as the first book and the plot didn't grasp me quite so hard, but it was really wonderful in its own right. For me, and for most readers, I think this book will be closure. If you were left forlorn and saddened by what happened in the first book, AFTER YOU gives the readers a chance to come to terms with what happened to Lou and the aftermath of Will's choice. This book was very much about love, loss, and the grief that follows you when you lose someone you love. It's about overcoming that grief, putting one foot in front of the other, and finding a way to go on. If you're looking to see how Lou's life turned out post-Will, how she was able to move on, I definitely recommend this read.
I loved that Jojo Moyes didn't sugarcoat this book. Parts of it were depressing--I'm not going to lie--but I actually liked that because anything other than the truth of the pain Will put his family through would have been a farce, a stretch of the truth (to say the least) and it would've dulled the power the first book held. In AFTER YOU, Lou is struggling to move on. She's depressed, lost, and angry. As she should be. Will's family is also irreparably damaged by Will's suicide and I thought the lives Moyes depicted, the way they were coping was extremely realistic. I was glad that she showed this dark side of the aftermath of Will's choices. Because no matter whether you think what Will did was justified or not, it was still selfish. It was still a choice that would undoubtedly leave the ones who loved him reeling after. And this is what Moyes portrayed.
In this book, there are some surprises. If you don't want to hear about it, stop reading here.
It turns out Will has a daughter to an old flame from college (his player days, pre-wheelchair). This daughter is so lost. She;s stuck with a selfish, self-absorbed mother who doesn't care about her and so when she discovers the identity of her father and that he's no longer alive, she seeks Lou out. Lou, struggling with her own life and identity feels a sort of obligation to help her and goes on to unite the girl with the other side of her family (Will's parents) and helps to turn her life around and show her the love that she so desperately sought.
All the while, Lou meets someone--a man, whom she's drawn to. She's afraid to fall for him and feel anything real because she's afraid of getting hurt again, but eventually, she allows herself to fall. She sees there's really no other choice if she ever wants to move on with her life. I was so happy to see her finally happy at the end. And the fact that Moyes took use through the journey of her struggle, made it that much more real and joyful when she did.
All in all, I rate this book 5 stars. I continue to love Moyes' writing, her characters, and the truths in her words.
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