Week 47: After You

This week's book:
After You
By JoJo Moyes

This week's book is the second book in Moyes series about a woman becoming her own person. This installment is our main character mourning the loss of the man she fell in love with in the previous book. The first book is about our main character taking care of a man who has suffered a major injury and he is planning to take his own life to end his suffering. To be honest, I read the first book when everyone else was reading it and didn't really enjoy it. I read the first book because I was doing a reading challenge and one of the requirements was a book that made you cry. When polling Facebook, a lot of people voted for Me Before You (which is the first book). I read it and didn't shed one tear. Turns out books never make me cry. I don't know why but I never cry while reading books (with the exception of My Sister's Keeper, which I blame on it being my time of the month while I was reading it).

I picked up the sequel to Me Before You at Barnes and Noble awhile back when the kids and I were at the store for storytime. This week's book was on the clearance table for $5.99, in hardback no less. I read about a third of it and wasn't feeling it. So I put it down and sort of forgot about it for a while. Well, I picked it back up late last week and, it turned out, I couldn't put it down. I enjoyed this book more than the first book. Maybe I could relate more to a person being sad about a departed loved one, being that I miss my mom everyday. The whole story is about the main character coming out of her shell and becoming a strong woman. I'm all for empowering women. She meets a member of her deceased love’s family and ends up helping the teenage girl. The main character also may have found a new love. This week's book ends very open ended, so it should come as no surprise that there is a third installment of this series. Don't worry, I already ordered a copy (on accident) from eBay (I seriously don't remember placing a bid on it).

If you have read the first book, dear reader, I would definitely recommend reading this book. If you haven't read the first novel, go read that first, because you will be totally lost if you don't.