Monday, September 28, 2015

After You (ME BEFORE YOU, #2) by Jojo Moyes

Publisher: Penguin
Pub. Date: September 29, 2015
Genre: Adult Fiction
Source: Print ARC
Rating: 2 Stars


Blurb:
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

 
Review:
When I first heard about Me Before You, the book hadn't even made its way to America yet. I had grown pretty close to this girl on Goodreads who was reading and told me I absolutely had to read this book. I was like, yeah! Okay let me go buy it real quick. Only I couldn't buy it because it only sold in the UK. I went looking everywhere on the net trying to find this book cause I desperately wanted to have my heart broken (that's totally a joke by the way). I finally stumbled upon a copy of the Book Depository. Score! Yeah... It had free shipping but the book itself was going to be twenty-five bucks. At this point in my life, I was strictly e-reader only. I didn't care to have regular books, nor was I was I going to pay twenty-five freaken bucks for a book. (Ask me now and hell yeah I'd pay that and more for a book I wanted.)

The day finally came that it was being sold in America. The kindle version was pretty expensive, I think it was 12.99 or something like that. So I was like hm...maybe I don't want to read it THAT much. Lo and behold, months later it was on sale for $2.99! You bet your ass I snatched that baby up. Again, now a days if a book I want, whether it be kindle or print, no matter the price, I get it. Fifteen bucks for a book on kindle, sureeee why not? Oh, the paperback is less expensive than the kindle version, maybe I'll just get both? Because I loved them so much. My point is no matter the price, I want the book. But if a book goes on sale, well all hell breaks loose. I don't care if it's going to make me broke, I'm going to get that book!

Let's get back on topic here. Me Before You was finally in my hands. Finally! I know what's going to happen, I made that friend tell me. So why in the hell did I still sob like a baby? I cried and cried and cried then you know what? I cried some more. THIS BOOK BROKE ME. Broke me down, lifted me up, but still in the end I was left with a million pieces that needed putting back together.

Make sure you have read the first book before you read on--

Which brings me to After You... It was very tough for me to finish. I felt the aftermath and depression that Lou felt after life without Will. The story just seems to have lost that special flair. Sure, Lou was her charming, beautiful self; but with Will you can clearly tell that something was missing. Then we get hit will a bombshell from Will's past. This is when I started having doubts about the book. Like I wanted to pull my hair out of my head from the frustration. Why? I want to know why that particular story line had to be added. It was a cop out and it left me angry.

I know I shouldn't be angry but I am. The people that Lou meets on the way, such as Sam, was an okay attempt in my opinion to try to give Lou a new romantic interest. It would have been fine if I felt like the two had an ounce of chemistry to go around. Maybe I'm biased? It's not like Me Before You was overly romantic or anything, but that six month relationship was everything...

Honestly, I think if you enjoyed the first book, maybe you should just skip out on this one. The story ended at Me Before You, it was a bittersweet ending, but it left you feeling as if you could find purpose in your own life. To live it to the fullest. I didn't feel that reading this story, and I'm disappointed that I couldn't enjoy it more. Moyes is a talented author and I will continue to read all of her books. But this one just didn't have the same effect on me as I thought it would.

*Thank you to the publisher for providing a copy for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own. 

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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.
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