After You
2015
The story picks up about eighteen months after Will’s death, with Lou still reeling and estranged from much of her family over her role in his choice. She’s drifting through a subdued, sheltered life, working a dead-end job under a difficult boss, when a fall from her roof (one that some people assume was a suicide attempt) forces a reckoning. From there, she starts attending a grief support group, meets the paramedic who saved her, gets a surprise job offer in New York, and discovers Lily, a teenage daughter Will never knew he had. The plot could have gone in more obvious directions, like a lawsuit or a media firestorm, but instead it gives Lou room to grieve at her own pace while gradually pulling her back toward life.
I liked this one, though not as much as the first. Lou remains a great character: flawed, relatable, and someone I recognized pieces of myself in, and the writing is just as sharp and witty as before. But it doesn’t quite reach the heights of the original, and I don’t think it needed to exist as a standalone story. It felt more like the necessary follow-up to a book that had already been adapted into a movie than a story that demanded to be told. Still, if you loved Lou and her family the first time around, spending another few hundred pages with them is a worthwhile, easy read, even if it doesn’t carry the same emotional weight.
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