After You - Jojo Moyes - ★★★.½

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AUTHOR: Jojo Moyes
SERIES: Me Before You, #2
GENRE: Contemporary Romance
PUBLICATION DATE: September 23, 2015
RATING: 3.5 stars.

#ContainsSpoilers for Book One

"Me Before You" ended with an unusual combination of tragedy and hope. The main female protagonist, Louisa Clark, has lost the "love of her life" and consequently, her raison d'être. Even though she has gained quite a bit of money and assets courtesy Will Traynor, she finds life not worth living for. All this changes one day when a stranger knocks on her door. Without any spoilers, all I can tell you is that the stranger is linked to the past and ends up changing Louisa's future.

Jojo Moyes writes in the Acknowledgements that she wrote this continuation for Louisa on demand from fans of book one. And I can certainly understand why they would want closure for such a character. Her vivacity brightened up the gloominess of the first book and softened the harshness of the grim realities of Will's life. But this is the very reason why book two seems disappointing at the start. Gone is that jolly girl with a huge smile and a positive outlook. What we have instead is a broken character who doesn't know where to begin putting the pieces of her life back together. Louisa seems lost without Will, and all her old insecurities are back. While you will still feel for her, she won't create as much of an impact as in the first book because she seems to be repeating the same mistakes over and over again in this book. Many of her actions and decisions seem utterly senseless.

The only impactful new characters in this book are Sam and Donna, the two paramedics. Sam is kind of like the male lead but much underutilized. But this book isn't about him, so it's fine. The above-mentioned "stranger" didn't create any memorable impact. The character was haphazard from start to almost end, and the random shifts in the personality irritated rather than intrigued me. Most of the beloved characters from the first book make an appearance, but you won't necessarily like them all this time around. But it was interesting to see how life worked out for them all after the traumatic events of the past.

The book begins very slowly, almost as if it too hasn't gotten over the grief from Will's death. But as the story progresses, the pace increases. I don't know if this was a conscious decision by Jojo Moyes or if it just turned out that way because of the plot. But the pacing works fairly well for the book.

What saves this book to a great extent is the ending. But to reach this ending, you do have to plod through a lot of mediocre and/or repetitive content. I might have enjoyed this book better if I hadn't liked the first book so much. It is because of the comparison that this book fell short.

All in all, though there are some fairly exaggerated situations in this book, it is still more realistic than book one. And just like reality, it is a little disappointing. But if you want to know what happens to Louisa after Will, you might be interested in picking this up.

Is it a must-read?
Absolutely not.

Does it continue the story well?
To a great extent.

Does it provide closure?
Well, there's still a book left in the trilogy. So this is a continuation but not a conclusion.

Can I read it without reading "Me Before You"?
You can, but do you really wanna do that? Start a series in between and that too, knowing that this is the weakest link of the trilogy?

I am moving on to book three now because it doesn't make sense to stop after 66.66% of a series. And also because I've heard it is much better than this book. So I can still hope to end the series on a high.

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