Review: After You by Jojo Moyes

Lou Clark has lots of questions.
Like how it is she's ended up working in an airport bar, spending every shift watching other people jet off to new places.
Or why the flat she's owned for a year still doesn't feel like home.
Whether her close-knit family can forgive her for what she did eighteen months ago.
And will she ever get over the love of her life.
What Lou does know for certain is that something has to change.
Then, one night, it does.

But does the stranger on her doorstep hold the answers Lou is searching for - or just more questions?
Close the door and life continues: simple, ordered, safe.
Open it and she risks everything.
But Lou once made a promise to live. And if she's going to keep it, she has to invite them in . . .



Review: Like most people I know, I was seriously excited about the release of this book. I had an advanced copy but for one reason or another I wasn't able to read it before the release date and so I ended up pre-ordering the audio book so that I could read it as I read the first book, to me this seemed apt. I was hooked into this book right from the word go, it was great to catch up with Louisa again and see how she was faring since we left her (sobbing our hearts out) at the end of Me Before You. I do wish had re-read/listened to Me Before You before picking this one up, not because I necessarily think you need to do that but it would have been wonderful to immerse myself in that world once more!

I was surprised that there wasn't much of 'Will' in this book. Yes he is mentioned but the story really doesn't contain any flashbacks, just a few memories through Lou or his family. I was quite glad of this in a way because it meant that it was definitely Louisa's story and nobody else's. There were some new characters introduced as well but I was glad to see that Louisa's family and Will's family still had a big part to play, as I really enjoyed them as secondary characters in the previous novel.

It's pretty hard to talk much about the storyline without giving away too much of the plot, needless to say there were plenty of twists and turns along the way which meant for some fast paced reading and there was certainly that tragic element that there was to Me Before You, which had me crying on my commute home (thank goodness it wasn't my commute to work) and one particularly major surprise pretty early on in the book, you'll need to get yourself a copy to find out just what that surprise is!

As I mentioned above, you really don't need to have read the first book to know what is going on in this book, or enjoy it immensely, it stands on its own. If you have read Me Before You though, you will love this book as a follow up to the last. I don't think it is quite as good, just because it doesn't have the same level of tension as the other one, but it was still a really good follow up. There are some beautiful lines in the book, just as in the first one and it was a real pleasure to read!

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