After You (Me Before You, #2) by Jojo Moyes

After You by Jojo Moyes

Published by Pamela Dorman Books

Published on September 29, 2015

Genres: Women's Fiction, Contemporary

Page Count: 368

Source: Purchased

Format: Hardback

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Description: “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.

Hello!

When I found out that Me Before You was getting a sequel, I was extremely hesitant. It was such a strong book that I was unsure if a sequel would add to it or take away from it. These were characters that I had developed a love for and I didn't want my memories of them to potentially be tarnished. Think about it. The reader grows attached to the characters. One wrong move and you altar their preception of that character and not necessarily in a good way. That being said, I did wonder how Lou was doing after the events of Me Before You. Tricky business, sequels are. Very very tricky. 

I wish that I could say that I went into this book with a totally open mind but I find that impossible to do. I did not go into with a completely open mind because I was so invested in the story. The first book was so extraordinary that it set this one up to potentially fall on its face. Unfortuantely, in some ways, it did. It was nice to see how Lou was doing but some of the events completely came out of left field and I was not quite sure how to process them. Good character development for some and so so for others. 

I am rating this book Three Orange Books because it fell short but I did not hate it. Predictable in some ways. Random in others. Upon finishing it, I hoped that any future books in the series would bypass this one. I wish that I could rate it higher because I loved Me Before You so much but I cannot. Not a horrible read but not up to the standards that the author gave us in the previous book. On the fence about recommending.

InkedBookDragon