Review: After You by Jojo Moyes

A NOTE FROM JOJO MOYES ABOUT HER EXCITING NEW NOVEL, AFTER YOU:

Dear Reader,

I wasn't going to write a sequel to Me Before You. But for years, readers kept asking and I kept wondering what Lou did with her life.  In the end the idea came, as they sometimes do, at 5:30 in the morning, leaving me sitting bolt upright in my bed and scrambling for my pen.

It has been such a pleasure revisiting Lou and her family, and the Traynors, and confronting them with a whole new set of issues. As ever, they have made me laugh, and cry. I hope readers feel the same way at meeting them—especially Lou—again.  And I'm hoping that those who love Will will find plenty to enjoy.

—Jojo Moyes


From the Hardcover edition.

Kindle Edition, 384 pages

Published September 29th 2015 by Pamela Dorman Books
Series: Me Before You #2
Genre: Fiction


Kristine's Thoughts:

** Please do not read this if you have not read Me Before You**

When I heard that there was a sequel to Me Before You I couldn't wait to get my hands on it. I was either going to love it or hate it. Me Before You was the very first book that I read in digital format when I got my Kindle a few years back and let me tell you that it left a lasting impression. It literally destroyed me, it was so emotional. So I wondered...what would a sequel be like with no Will?

First of all, it is absolutely not fair to compare the books. Although they are both about Lou, they are about different times in her life and offered her different challenges. In my honest opinion it would be pretty hard to compete with the first book so I didn't let that happen. I made sure I didn't compare the two and took each page as it came.

I found myself getting emotional a few times throughout the story. The empathy I had for Lou and her struggle to move forward was stronger than I thought it would be. I could feel her sadness and her reluctance or inability to start over. Would I have been as emotional if I hadn't read the first book? I'm not sure. All I know is that I felt it.

As much as I adored Will, After You provided the possibility of a new love interest for Lou that I was routing for with every turn of the page. I'll admit that I wasn't sure how or if it would play out and there was a slight bit of frustration on my part. However, Moyes captured the grief perfectly by making it not so cut and dry. Most things in life seldom are.

Me Before You was an epic, emotional and beautiful book. People that go into After You may be disappointed because it is not more of the same. How can it be? Something that extreme cannot happen to the same person twice. Treat it as a separate story and as a glimpse into Lou's life after and readers will enjoy so much more. I truly did enjoy getting to revisit Lou, her family and to find out what became of her after Will.

About the Author

Jojo Moyes is a British novelist.

Moyes studied at Royal Holloway, University of London. She won a bursary financed by The Independent newspaper to study journalism at City University and subsequently worked for The Independent for 10 years. In 2001 she became a full time novelist.

Moyes' novel Foreign Fruit won the Romantic Novelists' Association (RNA) Romantic Novel of the Year in 2004.

She is married to journalist Charles Arthur and has three children.

Connect with Jojo

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