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

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.  

Cover:  I don’t think there’s really much of anything to like OR dislike.  It’s very basic.

When I read Me Before You, I really connected with it.  It made me feels so many emotions.  It was a real rollercoaster of a book.  I loved it so much I have two tattoos based on the book.

It’s taken me a very long time to get around to picking up this sequel, as I just didn’t feel ready for it.  I didn’t see how it could possibly live up to the first book, and how the first book ended, I just couldn’t see a continuation for it.

So I eventually picked it up.  And I’m really glad that I did.

Did it live up to Me Before You?

No.

Did I still enjoy it?

Yes I did.

I was glad to catch up with the main character Louise.  Seeing her brought low by the events of Me Before You, and dealing with the aftermath.  It was rewarding seeing her fight to pull herself of the black hole she’s in, and potentially finding love again.

I would recommend picking up After You, if you enjoyed Me Before You.

I will be picking up the third instalment at some point.

4/5 stars.