After You: A Novel by Jojo Moyes - Paperback

After You starts off 18 months after the events at the end of Me Before You and Louisa Clarke is living in the apartment Will left for her while struggling to get on with her life. I've read so many negative reviews about this book, criticising Lou for not living the life that Will wanted her to live and not being able to get over the guilt she feels because she couldn't change his mind. I completely disagree with this. Losing someone is incredibly difficult for anyone and everyone deals with the grief and guilt left over from this loss in their own way and in their own time. I feel like this book deals with the topic of grief really well, treating it with the sensitivity and respect it deserves while also allowing for a huge amount of character development which is often lacking in contemporary 'romance' series

I read book 1, Me Before You in 2016 and LOVED IT. It DESTROYED me.It’s taken so long for me to read book 2! And this was by chance as I had run out of reading material on holiday and was given this book by someone else.I loved it. I was worried because Me Before You was so good! How could book 2 match up?!Personally, book 1 is my favourite, but I still loved After You. It really spoke to me. I’m grieving, and this book deals with that a lot.I can’t wait to read book 3 and find out more about Louisa Clark!

I am probably the only person on the planet who just couldn't get into this book. I found it really boring and found myself skim reading pages to find something interesting. It was just not my cup of tea I suspect as I know it has been hugely successful. Thankfully I bought it secondhand so I will be giving to my local charity shop so that someone else can hopefully enjoy it.

The sequel to such a tear-jerker as Me Before You was always going to be a big challenge. It's been quite a while since I read Me Before You and can still tell you most of the story. I'm always a little bit suspicious of book sequels, especially when they are so good, because the follow up doesn't always match the main event.I have to say when I started After You I was worried. Lou Clark is now 18mths on from losing Will at Dignitas and life for her is going from bad to worse. She is still frightened of everything new and anything that changes. One night when she is alone in her flat (bought with money left for her by Will), her doorbell rings and with it changes that even she isn't ready for.I'm not sure I enjoyed it as much as the first (which is why the rating is 4* not 5) and it will be interesting to know what other people think of it having read the first, but all in all, it was a good read.

3.5 stars. I enjoyed this book more than the first one in the series as we didn't have any of the over-emotive descriptions of love, which was a relief. I was puzzled though how Lou starts off so depressed and then has her accident when the end of Me Before You was so upbeat. Yes, there is an explanation for this later in the book but I didn't really credit it.There is the start of a different love story here, which is fine, but I do prefer Lou when she's single - she's just a more interesting character then. When she's in love, she seems to lose any common sense and become a different woman entirely, which is disconcerting. I also thought the love story was based on a bit of a cliche too. However, there's a nice twist in the ongoing plot which kept me reading on and I do want to know what happens next. So I'll be getting the last in the series too.