Book Review: After You by Jojo Moyes

Blurb: 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.

Review: I think I've never been so excited and afraid at the same time for the release of a sequel. Me Before You is one of my all time favourite reads and even after finishing it a couple of years ago I remember it as if I had finished it just yesterday. So when Jojo Moyes announced she was writing a sequel I was over the moon but at the same time I couldn't not think what if it doesn't live up my really high expectations? 

So to go straight to the point, is After You as good as Me Before You? For me the answer is no. But just because Me Before You is out of this world good and such a unique and powerful story that it stays with you forever. But I have to say that After You is a great book and a worthy sequel. I promised myself I wouldn't cry like a baby with this one. I think I lasted ten pages. As soon as you go back to Louisa's world, everything goes back to you and the emotions are too much. 

I soon realised that just as Louisa, I was still mourning Will. I think we all needed this book to be able to accept his death and move on too. As the beginning of the story, Will's presence was still really strong and alive and I just couldn't stop my tears just thinking about it all. I could feel Lou's pain. But as the story progresses and new characters appear, little by little you feel how Will's presence starts to fade away and it becomes Lou's story. 

It was difficult not to compare the new characters with Will, especially Lou's new love interest, basically because if you compare them, they are going to fail miserably against Will, he had a charisma and a personality so unique and his connection with Lou was just extraordinary. But, little by little I starting liking and even loving these new characters, especially a young girl who was a bit lost and needed someone to love her unconditionally. And soon I found myself so immersed in the story that hours would pass without me even realising. 

I am giving After You five stars because on its own it is an extraordinary story about moving on and finding who you want to be but also because it worked as a sequel. It probably won't be my book of the year but I will hold it close to my heart. And I'm sure that Me Before You fans will not be disappointed with Lou's after Will life. 

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