Review: After You (by Jojo Moyes)

My Rating:  3 stars

I had actually read this book more than a year ago, not too long after reading the first book Me Before You, however I had put off writing a review for it because of several reasons, the main one being that I was seething mad that this sequel even existed.  I enjoyed Me Before You immensely and even though at the time I read that book, I may not have been as emotionally invested in it overall as other readers were, I still felt that there was a “specialness” to Lou and Will’s story that was uniquely and irreplaceably theirs.  Despite the controversial ending, that book worked perfectly fine as a stand-alone novel and I finished the book feeling that there was enough closure for this to be a memorable read that was not overdone.  But then I found out that there was a sequel and despite my misgivings due to a general disdain for sequels/spinoffs/follow-ups that involve the same characters and story, I decided to go ahead and read After You anyway – once again, my curiosity got the better of me.  My very first reaction after finishing the sequel was that I wanted to throw the book against the wall (yes, I was that upset) – the only thing that prevented me from doing so was the fact that I had bought a paperback copy of the book at the airport (I was coming home from a business trip) and seeing that it cost way more than I should’ve had to pay for it, I didn’t want to ruin the physical book itself.  To me, the entire story in After You was totally unnecessary and it frustrated me the direction that Moyes decided to take the sequel, introducing characters that I felt did nothing to enhance the original story.  In fact, I felt like the way things went down in the sequel actually eroded some of that “specialness” that had made the first book so good and memorable.  Also, there were too many times throughout the book where I felt like the story was being dragged out unnecessarily and I actually started to lose patience.  Worst of all though, this sequel ended up tainting my memory of all the characters from the original story -- by the end, I was so irritated and annoyed with Lou that it was hard for me imagine her as being the same “special” person she was in the first book.  If After You had been a completely separate story, a stand-alone that had nothing to do with Me Before You, I think I might have been able to overlook some of the things that frustrated me about the story (i.e. some of the plot points that were a bit far-fetched) and maybe, just maybe, even like the book. But I guess it was not meant to be….

So then, since I obviously didn’t like the sequel much and procrastinated on writing this review because of it, why did I decide more than a year later to finally put my thoughts to paper?  Well, I just found out (and very shockingly so) that Moyes will be coming out with a THIRD book to this series (the third book is titled Still Me and is scheduled for publication in January 2018).  Of course, my first reaction to this news was – REALLY??? ANOTHER SEQUEL???  Do we really need a continuation to this story?  Part of me wants to steer clear from the third book because seeing how my reaction was to the second book, I’m pretty sure this go around is going to be the same (reading the summary for the third book didn’t help things either) and I’m not keen on the idea of putting myself through all that frustration again. BUT of course, once again, my curiosity got the better of me, plus the fact that I’m already so “invested” in this franchise from reading the first 2 books, I feel like it’s impossible at this point not to read the third book too.  I’m not sure what to expect (in a way, I don’t WANT to expect anything) but I’m going to try to keep an open mind and hope for the best….

(Read in August 2016)