From Goodreads.com:
“You’re going to feel uncomfortable in your new world for a bit. But I hope you feel a bit exhilarated too. Live boldly. Push yourself. Don’t settle. Just live well. Just live. Love, Will.”

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.

My review:
Right after I finished Me Before You I just knew I had to read the sequel. More Louisa? Yes, please! Surely the sequel has to be as good as the first book, right? Wrong …

Unfortunately, After You fell short of my expectations. I found Lily’s character incredibly irritating, (“I hate my privileged lifestyle at home but refuse to do anything for myself! Feed me! House me! Bathe me!”) and while I’m not 100% sure why Lou put up with her, I’m sure it had something to do with the fact that she’s Will’s daughter. (Funny how we keep things around out of pure sentiment, like a sweater full of holes.) Lily didn’t help Lou in moving forward from Will’s passing, other than startling her off the roof which lead to Lou’s relationship with Ambulance Sam. In fact, I’m pretty sure Lily’s character could have been removed completely and I would have been okay with that; someone else could have found Lou on the roof and disappeared from the remainder of the book and everything would’ve worked out the same.

This book just screamed, “You can’t help those who can’t help themselves.” Lily didn’t want to do anything to better herself, Lou didn’t want to more forward with her life. Hell, the only person who seemed to be screaming “Carpe Diem” was Lou’s mom, and that was just a weird tangent of a storyline.

All that being said, I didn’t not like After You. It just wasn’t written to the same level as Me Before You. I still enjoyed Lou’s humour, but I just wanted a bit more from it. I’m giving After You 3.5 stars out of 5.