After You by JoJo Moyes

Summary from Amazon: 

 “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. . . .

My Thoughts:

     So to be honest, I was scared to read this book.  I loved Me Before You so much even though it left me a hungover, sobbing mess.  JoJo Moyes gives you real, amazing characters and makes you a part of their lives and their pain.  The thought of the sequel not living up to the first or the possibility that Lou would end up not a person I could love or relate to made me very scared to pick up this book.

     After I have now womanned up and read it I am so mad at myself for waiting!  Is After You as amazing as Me Before You? No, but it is close! We join Lou eighteen months after she lost Will and she has done some of the things that she promised him but she is still lost and still not really living. 

          This book is sad but it is also very funny.  Lou is struggling to learn how to not only live again but to also have a life!  She has a dead end job, she barely leaves her apartment, and she has no one to talk to outside of her weekly support group meetings.  It all sounds very depressing but Lou is struggling and ends up with people in her life that are understanding to her grief and are also very humorous. 

     I don’t want to spoil anything here for you but she meets many new people who help her to grieve and to slowly come out of her depression.  These people become instrumental in making Lou eventually realize that she can’t just go through the motions, she has to LIVE!  I was so happy to see Lou begin to heal and learn to open back up again to become the Lou we all fell in love with in Me Before You.

4.5/5 stars