Book Review: After You + MBY Trailer!

4  stars (I really liked it) for After You by 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. 
Source: Goodreads



Ever since the news of the sequel came out, I pre-ordered it immediately.
MBY is my favourite book out there. One of the few ones that have managed to make me bawl. I mean, even the little note at the beginning of After You was enough to choke me up. Just the mention of Will's name is enough to make me cry out in despair.
Then the book arrived and I put off reading it, scared of the emotional train wreck I might happen upon. But with the trailer out and the movie only a few more months away (and me being on holiday), there didn't seem a better time to start on this beauty.

I know the story has received mixed reviews and I get it.
If you're expecting a book exactly like Me Before You than you should stop, sit down and think about it. Ask yourself why the sequel would benefit from being like MBY?
It wouldn't.
I think if you start reading this book with that acknowledged, it will keep you from having the wrong expectations.
It's exactly what I did.

We follow Lou in her new life. Only Lou's new life isn't exactly what she had imagined it would be like. With the ghost of Will and his decision still hanging over her life, Lou struggles to find her own place in this world.
When an unexpected guest arrives at her doorstep Lou's life goes in fast forward as she finds herself responsible for another human being all over again. Only this one brings a new kind of troubles with her than Will used to and Lou finds herself more than often struggling to do the right thing.

If having to deal with a teenager isn't enough, she struggles with the arrival of a man in her life which she feels scarily attracted to. Can Lou allow herself to let anyone in again or has her past with Will changed her?

Let me start by saying how emotionally distressed I was from beginning to end. Where MBY was a train headed straight towards heartbreak town. After You is an emotional roller coaster with looping after looping. There are so many little factors present in this story, many small story lines that are entwined together that every time there was a new plot twist. A new tension to be worried about.
I caught myself constantly reading ahead in the hope of finding out what would happen.

It's been such a joy of meeting up with Lou again. She's a breath of fresh air and a pleasure to read about. But what makes me sad is that there wasn't much mention of Will. I mean, there is but not in the way I had hoped there to be. I'm still not over Will, I don't think I'll ever be. And the lack of him made me feel like even though Lou managed to move on I'm not sure I, as a reader, got closure on the subject of Will Traynor (does that sound totally lame?).

However, I wasn't a big fan of the ending. This story has all been about closure and moving on. Not only for the characters but also for the readers. Yet, the story finishes with -what felt to me like- another open ending. Somehow I would've preferred a 'and they all lived happily ever after' because that's what I felt After You was all about. Yet it became another open ending and I'm not sure how I feel about that. It almost felt like she did it on purpose because it felt a lot like the ending to MBY.

The book tells a beautiful story about grief, friendship, honour, values and family.

When you write a sequel to one of world's biggest tearjerker you're bound to bump against some expectations and prejudices from your future readers. But I think Jojo Moyes did a splendid job.

* * *

And what about this movie trailer? Surely everyone has seen it by now! Even people who haven't read the book have seen the trailer! I understand why. The trailer is perfection! If the movie is only half as good as the trailer then I'll know I'll be bowling my eyes out in the theater. (I seriously think I need to go watch this on my own due to a possible overflow of tears).
It looks absolutely perfect and I am really exciting to see what they did with the movie.


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