After You

I did not want a sequel to Me Before You. The first book ended with a hard choice and a letter telling Lou to live boldly. I liked the ache. When I heard Jojo Moyes wrote After You, published September 29, 2015 in the UK by Michael Joseph and in the US by Pamela Dorman Books, 352 pages in the US hardcover with ISBN 9780525426592, I worried it would undo Will's death to comfort us. It does not. It sits with grief for a long time and lets Lou be messy. I read it in three days and forgave it for existing by page 100.

Louisa Clark is 28 and stuck. She works in an airport bar watching planes she will not board. She rents a flat Will paid for and cannot make it home. She drinks too much wine, wears Will's old shirts, avoids her parents' calls. She tries to honor his letter by taking a class, by traveling once, but panic follows. Eighteen months after Will died in Switzerland, Lou is thinner, paler, and angry at people who tell her to move on.

The opening accident is stark. After a work party, drunk and upset, Lou goes up to the roof of her building with a neighbor and falls or steps off while trying to walk a ledge. She shatters her wrist, breaks ribs, punctures a lung. The fall reads as neither clear suicide nor clear mishap, which feels true to her state. She did not plan to die. She did not plan to live well either. Her parents rush to London. Her sister Treena scolds. The Traynors, Will's parents, send quiet help. Lou agrees to therapy and to a grief group called Moving On to get everyone off her back.

The basement group

Moving On meets in a church basement with bad cookies and folding chairs. Members share losses. A widower who talks to his wife's photo. A young man who lost his brother. An older woman who lost a child decades ago and still counts years. Lou sits silent for weeks, then talks about Will in bursts. She tells funny stories first. How he mocked her shoes. How he hated her chatter. Then harder truths. How she stayed till the end. How she cashed his gift and feels she wasted it.

Moyes writes group scenes with humor that never mocks grief. People interrupt. Tea spills. Someone's phone rings with a dead spouse's ringtone and no one laughs. The leader, Marc, pushes Lou to set small goals. Walk daily. Cook one meal. Call one friend. Lou resists, then complies in her crooked way. She walks at night. She burns toast. She calls her coworker. Progress here is not montage. It is a woman buying a plant and keeping it alive for a month.

Work grounds her. The airport bar has regulars, sticky taps, and a manager who likes Lou but needs reliability. Lou is late after hospital visits. She forgets orders. She charms when present and vanishes when low. Her coworker, a sharp older woman, covers and scolds in equal measure. Those shifts show London as a place of transit. Everyone else leaves. Lou pours.

Family pulls her back to her small town for stretches. Her mother Josie has started reading feminist books and wants more than housework. Her father keeps fixing things. Treena studies and parents her son Thomas with help. They love Lou loudly and clumsily. Dinners are crowded and warm. Lou feels both soothed and judged. Her mother asks about therapy. Her father asks about money. Treena asks why Lou wastes Will's gift on rent instead of school. No one asks gently enough, but love is there under the noise.

Sam and Lily

Two new people change the pattern. Sam Fielding is a paramedic who brings Lou in after her fall and later meets her through the group and through chance calls. He is solid, kind, divorced, raising no kids but close to his nephew. He lives in a half fixed house with hens and an allotment. He does not talk much. He shows up. He fixes Lou's door. He drives her mother to appointments. He waits when Lou panics about intimacy. Moyes takes time making Sam distinct from Will. Will was verbal, rich, sharp. Sam is physical, ordinary paid, steady. Lou fears betraying Will by wanting Sam. Sam fears being a rebound. Their slow dating, with missed texts and awkward dinners, felt adult and believable. Sam's house helps tell that story. Half painted walls, hens in the yard, a nephew's drawings on the fridge. Nothing finished, everything tended. Lou, who kept Will's flat like a museum, learns from that mess that a home can be in progress and still hold love.

Lily is the shock. Sixteen, rude, clever, in trouble. She shows up claiming to be Will Traynor's daughter, conceived at seventeen with a woman named Tanya. Lou thinks it is a scam. The Traynors think it is impossible. Tests and letters prove it likely true. Will never knew. Lily's mother died, her stepfather cannot cope, school expels her. She latches onto Lou as a link to a father she idealized. Lou resists, then relents.

Lily brings chaos that Lou needs and hates. She steals, lies, runs to London clubs, drinks, flirts with older boys. Lou chases her through buses and bars, calling Sam for rides. Mrs. Traynor, Will's mother Camilla, wants to control Lily with lawyers and boarding schools. Lou wants to give Lily room while keeping her safe. They clash over what Will would want. Camilla grieves a son and now faces a granddaughter who swears and smokes. Lou grieves a lover and now mothers his child in effect. Neither woman is fully right. Their talks are tense and polite, very English, with tea going cold.

The middle weaves these threads without rushing. Lou returns to work, dates Sam with stops and starts, attends group, tracks Lily. She visits the Traynor house, now quieter after Will. She meets Tanya, Lily's grandmother, who tells hard truths about teen pregnancy and secrets. She learns Will was seventeen and scared, not cruel, when he left. That knowledge softens Lou's image of Will without dimming love. He was a boy then. He became a man who chose his end. Both can be true.

What living means

The last third tests every gain. Lily runs away after a fight with Camilla and hides with a boyfriend who deals. Lou and Sam search through a night that mixes fear and farce. A club bathroom, a bus depot, a hospital waiting room again. Lily overdoses or drinks too much and needs pumping. Lou stays by the bed, calling her by name, promising stupid things like matching tattoos and trips. When Lily wakes, she is sullen and small. Moyes does not redeem her in one hug. Trust builds in rides to school and shared chips.

Lou's job cracks. She misses shifts during the search and gets warned. She chooses Lily over hours, then scrambles to keep both. Sam helps with practical things. He teaches Lily first aid. He fixes Lou's flat railing that failed her. He tells Lou he loves her without demanding she say it back cleanly. Lou cannot say it fully yet. She sleeps with him and panics after. She cancels dates. She returns to group and admits she feels guilty for laughing with Sam while Will is dead. Marc and the group normalize it. Joy does not erase loss. That line, plain as tap water, steadied me.

Camilla sues or threatens to for custody, forcing Lou to decide what role she wants. Lou is not Lily's mother or legal kin. She is a former girlfriend of a dead man with a bad wrist and a bar job. A lawyer tells her she has no standing. Lou writes a letter to the court anyway about showing up. She lists nights sat, meals made, school runs done. The judge favors kin but grants Lou visiting time and a voice. It is a modest win. Moyes resists courtroom miracles here, unlike some of her other books. Paperwork and patience matter more than speeches.

Work shifts too. Lou leaves the airport bar after a humiliating scene where she serves drunks while Lily watches. She takes a job in a vintage clothing shop that fits her style. Bright tights, odd shoes, talkative warmth. Customers like her. The owner, an older woman with a sharp eye, mentors without mothering. Lou starts styling windows, then people. She feels competent for the first time since Will. That competence lets her accept Sam's care without feeling bought. She pays her share. She fixes her own door twice before calling Sam the third time.

The end is open but hopeful. Lou does not marry Sam on the last page. She does not scatter Will's memory. She visits Switzerland once more, not to relive but to return a book and say goodbye in her own words. She tells Lily the truth about Will's choice in age appropriate terms. Choice, pain, love, limits. Lily hears it as permission to live rather than mythologize. Lou keeps attending Moving On, now as someone who welcomes newcomers with better cookies. She and Sam plan a trip with no promises beyond tickets. Her parents visit the flat and find it cleaner, brighter, lived in.

What works is Moyes's ear for ordinary talk. Lou's voice, funny and self tripping, carries pages that could sag. Treena's barbs, Josie's new slogans, Sam's short texts, Lily's slang. All distinct. London feels damp and busy. Buses late, rain on windows, market stalls. Grief is shown in habits. Unwashed mugs. Unopened mail. A plant dying, then a new one living. I trusted those signs more than any speech about healing.

What drags is length and tidiness in spots. At 352 pages in the US hardcover, some subplots resolve fast. The Traynor money smooths problems that would crush most grievers. Rent, private therapy, lawyers. Lou's poverty in book one is softened here by Will's gift, which removes some stakes. Lily's grandmother accepts Lou quickly after initial hostility. Sam is almost too good, with hens and a kind nephew and endless patience. Readers who want rougher edges may sigh. I did once, then kept reading because Lou herself stays rough enough to balance.

The handling of suicide grief needs a note. Will chose assisted death in book one. Lou replays his last day often. She dreams of clinics and letters. Moyes does not judge Will here, but she shows cost to those left. If you lost someone to suicide or assisted death, these passages may sting. Group scenes discuss blame and relief with care. No graphic detail. Emotional weight is high throughout.

Practical tip. Reread Will's last letter before starting, or at least recall its charge to live boldly. Lou measures every choice against it and finds it heavy. Knowing the letter helps you see why a simple job change feels like betrayal to her. Also keep the Traynor family straight. Camilla the mother, Steven the father, Georgina the sister. Lily connects through Will's teen past, not through them, which explains their awkward claim. A final note on Sam's work helps too. Moyes shows paramedic shifts in short bursts. Night calls, cold flats, drunk falls, quiet deaths. Those scenes explain why Sam does not panic when Lou or Lily crisis hits. He has seen worse on ordinary Tuesdays, and he brings that calm home without making it a speech.

I closed the Pamela Dorman hardcover kinder to sequels than before. Lou does not replace Will with Sam or with Lily. She adds rooms to a house Will helped her imagine. The flat that felt like a tomb gets plants, photos, a fixed rail. The body that fell gets stronger, scarred, able to climb stairs without gasping. The promise to live boldly shrinks to human size. Take a better job. Stay for a teen who lies. Let a good man fix your door and then learn to fix it yourself. That smaller boldness felt honest. I still miss Will, and so does Lou. Missing and living share the same rooms now, and she keeps both doors open.