Hi everyone! Today I’m reviewing the sequel to what I have just decided is literally my book of the year so far: Me Before You by Jojo Moyes. I reviewed this book back in May here and told you all how I’d fallen in love with the characters, the setting of the book, the bond that Will and Louisa shared… Just everything, really!
It’s a beautiful story, so when I saw that Jojo Moyes had written a sequel… well I was quite confused really. I was quite happy with the way the first book had ended, all my questions were answered, except the big one which I thought Jojo Moyes would be happy to leave to the reader’s imagination: What happened to Louisa afterwards? Despite my love of Me before You, I felt cautious about reading the sequel, I didn’t want it to spoil the first book for me. But when I saw it in Waterstones half price, I decided to take the risk and buy a copy and read it.
When I read the blurb, I was then immediately desperate to read it – and I’m so glad I did! Before I go any further, there is a slightly big spoiler in my review for Me Before You, the first book (as if the title of this sequel wasn’t a big enough spoiler, haha) so just bear that in mind! But this is a spoiler-free review for After You. 🙂
So, at the beginning of After You, we discover that Louisa is working in the bar of an airport. Which disappointed me a little – what had happened to the whole moral of the previous story: Just live? Will had taught Louisa to live a whole life of adventure, he proved how much potential she had in her. But she had decided to work in a bar, after travelling hadn’t worked out very well for her.
She has a flat close by, funded by her inheritance, and it seems that her life has dipped to the same boring level as it was when she was working in the ‘Buttered Bun’, the teashop back in her home town. And she is still very much grieving Will. 😦
But then things change; Louisa falls off a very high building and injures herself badly: (at which point, I had the whole story figured out; she hires a carer, who she falls in love with, and then figures that she doesn’t want to go on like this, so she goes to Dignitas… 😦 But of course, I was wrong – phew 🙂 ) Nah, but Louisa does meet a very… dashing… paramedic, who she rather likes the look of, in the process of her accident.
So yeah, when she’s recovered, Louisa goes back to working at the airport, tormented by a horrible boss, a highly humiliating uniform and still a big hole in her life where Will used to be. To try and sort things out, she starts attending a ‘Moving On’ club for people who have lost somebody close to them.
The humour in this book is just as brilliant as it was in the first book, but it also has a very sad streak running right through the entire book – unlike the first book, which is surprising because I suppose the first book deals with darker themes such as Will’s plans to go to Dignitas. But yeah, I had a tear in my eye several times during this book, mainly at Louisa’s lowest points, when she is grieving Will, and I missed him so much, too. Somehow Louisa just didn’t seem complete without his company.
There is quite a big surprise in this book in the form of a mysterious person trying to get in touch with Louisa, regarding Will. I really grew quite fond of this mysterious character, who becomes quite close to Louisa, and thought that it was a really clever idea to revolve the story around a “Will-related figure”.
Overall, this book went way beyond my expectations – I wouldn’t say it was as good as Me Before You, but it was a very good book and it was really interesting to see Louisa’s progress after Will’s death. I loved this book and I’m so glad I read it!
I’m giving it four stars out of five because it wasn’t as good as the first book, but I personally see it as a very successful sequel:
Have You Read This Book?
- Have you read After You? Were you impressed or disappointed?
- Have you read Me Before You? Are you planning on reading the sequel?
- Were you surprised Jojo Moyes wrote a sequel?
Thanks for reading my review!
The first book I read was the second book in Ransom Riggs’ amazing Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children trilogy: Hollow City. I didn’t know what I was expecting from the sequel, but I certainly didn’t expect a book of such high standard as this. It was undoubtedly just as good as the first book, for me, and I loved every page. The peculiar photographs were just as amazing, and the characters were very well-developed. I gave it a five-star rating.
Finally, I read Jo-Jo Moye’s amazing: Me Before You. Aw, I just loved this, despite it being heart-breaking and sad. The characters were just beautifully developed and the story flowed very well. The end made me cry so much. Although the story was quite predictable for me, I still very much enjoyed reading Will and Louisa’s journey and I’m so glad I picked this book up and read it. It comes with such a valuable moral and it offers a very interesting perspective which most people won’t have considered before. I gave it a 4.5 star rating, mainly due to the fact that it was so sad.
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