After You ~ Jojo Moyes

“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.

Book Review:

I was skeptical of this sequel. I wanted to know how everyone handled the aftermath of the events in Me Before You but I didn't want my ideas of the characters to be ruined either. I was worried that resentment towards Will's ultimate decision was going to overpower the beauty of the time that Louisa had with him. I was worried that Louisa would loose her purpose again. I was just so scared that the beauty and magic of Me Before You would dissipate.

At the beginning, I thought that I was going to hate the entire story. I thought that I was going to not like Louisa again. And I thought that the magic had really disappeared. But I kept on reading anyway. Eventually, I began to like it. Now, by no means do I think that it as good as its predecesor but it still holds its own. Louisa had lost her purpose again, as I expected, but she found it again in unexpected places. Now, I won't say much for fear of spoiling the surprise, but all I'll say is Will left behind a whole new purpose for Louisa.

Favorite Quote:

“You learn to live with it, with them. Because they do stay with you, even if they’re not living, breathing people any more.
It’s not the same crushing grief you felt at first, the kind that swamps you, and makes you want to cry in the wrong places, and get irrationally angry with all the idiots who are still alive when the person you love is dead.
It’s just something you learn to accommodate.
Like adapting around a hole. I don’t know. It’s like you become … a doughnut instead of a bun”