After You

After You by Jojo Moyes

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This sequel to Me Before You is every bit as good. But don’t expect it to be like Me Before You. Lou has changed. Will’s death left a hole in her heart that money and travel has not healed. Jojo Moyes gives us an unflinching look at love and loss, and how sometimes it takes a devastating accident, and to have our world turned upside down before we find how to move on. I loved all the zany characters and all their faults. I have half a mind to read everything else Jojo Moyes has ever written…

Book Description: 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.

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Me Before You

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Fans of Jodi Picoult ought to like this one. It’s a love story with a twist, a chance to learn something about quadriplegia, and an exploration of the pros and cons of the right to die. The love story of two very different people learning how to relate to each other I thought was very good. I knew how it was going to end, although I kept hoping it would be different. Partly, I just wasn’t convinced by the choices made. I’m sure it’s a tragedy for anyone to become a quadriplegic, but I just couldn’t agree with Will’s determination to die. Why wasn’t he getting counseling for depression? Why wasn’t he able to work? And he tells Lou at the end that the past six months was the best of his life. It just didn’t add up for me at the end. Will was ultimately controlling and selfish. Lou was a dishrag. She did grow tremendously through prodding from Will, but I didn’t get the sense that she had taken control of her own circumstances afterward. Lots of food for thought. This should make for a great book club discussion. And I will probably read more by this author.

Book Description: Louisa Clark is an ordinary girl living an exceedingly ordinary life—steady boyfriend, close family—who has barely been farther afield than their tiny village. She takes a badly needed job working for ex–Master of the Universe Will Traynor, who is wheelchair bound after an accident. Will has always lived a huge life—big deals, extreme sports, worldwide travel—and now he’s pretty sure he cannot live the way he is. Will is acerbic, moody, bossy—but Lou refuses to treat him with kid gloves, and soon his happiness means more to her than she expected. When she learns that Will has shocking plans of his own, she sets out to show him that life is still worth living.

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