From the shelf: After You

Title: After You
Author: Jojo Moyes
Genre: Realistic Fiction, Romance, Chick-Lit
Date read: January 20-24, 2016
Dawn Rates: ★★★★ (4/5)

Summary (cr: goodreads)

11 hours, 6 minutes

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.

After You is quintessential Jojo Moyes—a novel that will make you laugh, cry, and rejoice at being back in the world she creates. Here she does what few novelists can do—revisits beloved characters and takes them to places neither they nor we ever expected.

My Review: (also in goodreads)

Lookback: Me Before You

This is 18 months after the events in "Me Before You". I was one of those fans waiting for a sequel but at the same time I dreaded it. I have a lot of disappointments in sequels. But just like Lou, I needed the closure. I wanted to move on from Will Traynor's selfish decision to move on. Yes, I was that bitter. Luckily, Jojo Moyes announced that she is doing the aftermath sequel and here we are. This was the most real way I could think of on how Lou would cope up with Will's death. I know that some might judge her for being that way since she has known Will for just a short time, but for me it doesn't matter how long they have known each other...what they had was real and because of that decision, it was a sad love story. It was a big 'Might have been'. I don't blame Will though. He just wanted to escape from the life he had after having the life he supposed he had. The downside from that decision is the chance to have his happy ever after. This is a story about how people around Will did cope up with the aftermath of them all. How Lou tried to move on with her life just as she promised and how she failed to do so. She was like a shell of herself and because of that a reminder of Will came to remind her that she should move on with her life. I loved how this became a sort of closure to that part of her life. I think I also had my closure when I read the last page. For me what happened at the last scene was telling us that life is full of possibilities and that the future is bright ahead, its just that we needed that closure.

Till the next read...