After You by Jojo Moyes

Release Date: September 29th, 2015
Publisher: Penguin Canada
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 352 Pages
Series: Me Before You #2
Format: Paperback
Source: Purchased
Reason: Personal Interest
Find the Author: Website

“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.

“Around me a million people are living, breathing, eating, arguing. A million lives completely divorced from mine. It is a strange sort of peace.”  

Me Before You was definitely one of my favourite reads of 2016. I still catch myself thinking about it, and I absolutely adored the movie. Having said all that, I was absolutely terrified to read After You. I felt like Me Before You should have been left just as it was. I didn't think a sequel was necessary. But, my curiosity got the best of me, and while shopping at Costco, I succumbed and bought the book. As bookworms, we all know what 'Book Regret' is. We've all suffered it. Whether it's not buying that one limited edition, or not enjoying a super-hyped book, etc. My book regret: Not reading After You sooner!

After You was the book that I didn't know I needed. I thought I was okay leaving Lou's story exactly where it left off in Me Before You, but I was so wrong. There was so much more to Lou that is revealed in this novel. We all fell in love with that witty personality and her corky style, but in After You there is a whole other side to Lou that is uncovered. We not only get to know Lou on a deeper level, but all of those we fell in love with in Me Before You, her mom, dad, Treena and Thom, and a whole new cast of spectacular characters!

I have come to love Lou so much, and I know it's unlikely, but I would absolutely LOVE to read more of her! Jojo Moyes sure knows how to craft lovely characters. Heart, soul and so much life!

If you haven't read After You yet, please do not make the same mistake I did. Go out, and get your copy now!