After You: A Novel (Me Before You Trilogy)

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Giver of Stars and the forthcoming Someone Else's Shoes,discover the love story that captured over 20 million hearts in Me Before You, After You, and Still Me.

“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.

Jojo Moyes is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Giver of Stars, Still Me, Paris for One and Other Stories, After You, One Plus One, The Girl You Left Behind, Me Before You, The Last Letter from Your Lover, The Horse Dancer, Silver Bay, The Ship of Brides, and The Peacock Emporium. The Last Letter from Your Lover is now available as a major motion picture on Netflix. She lives with her husband and three children in Essex, England.

Praise for AFTER YOU:

"Jojo Moyes has a hit with AFTER YOU.”—USA Today

“The genius of Moyes…[is that she] peers deftly into class issues, social mores and complicated relationships that raise as many questions as they answer. And yet, there is always resolution. It's not always easy, it's not always perfect, it's sometimes messy and not completely satisfying. But sometimes it is.”—Bobbi Dumas, NPR

“Think Elizabeth Bennet after Darcy's eventual death; Alice after Gertrude; Wilbur after Charlotte. The 'aftermath' is a subject most writers understandably avoid, but Moyes has tackled it and given readers an affecting, even entertaining female adventure tale about a broken heroine who ultimately rouses herself and falls in love again, this time with the possibilities in her own future.”–Maureen Corrigan, NPR

"Charming." —People Magazine

“Like its predecessor [Me Before You], After You is a comic and breezy novel that also tackles bigger, more difficult subjects, in this case grief and moving on… We all lose what we love at some point, but in her poignant, funny way, Moyes reminds us that even if it’s not always happy, there is an ever after.” –Miami Herald

Praise for ME BEFORE YOU:

"A hilarious, heartbreaking, riveting novel . . . I will stake my reputation on this book."—Anne Lamott, People

“When I finished this novel, I didn’t want to review it: I wanted to reread it. . . . an affair to remember.”—New York Times Book Review

“An unlikely love story . . . To be devoured like candy, between tears.”—O, The Oprah Magazine

“Funny and moving but never predictable.”—USA Today (4 stars)

“Masterful . . . a heartbreaker in the best sense . . . Me Before You is achingly hard to read at moments, and yet such a joy.”—New York Daily News

“Funny, surprising and heartbreaking, populated with characters who are affecting and amusing . . . This is a thought-provoking, thoroughly entertaining novel that captures the complexity of love.”—People Magazine

Praise for STILL ME:

“Still Me offers a warm conclusion to the Me Before You trilogy. . . resulting in the best entry in the trilogy yet. . . Moyes has crafted a clear-eyed tale of self-discovery and the sacrifice required to live a life honestly in pursuit of the things you love. [It will] keep you sighing with delight to the very last page. A.” —Entertainment Weekly (online)

“Louisa is the perfect mix of daffy and brilliant, a sartorial risk-taker with a knack for solving other people’s problems. It is utterly satisfying to watch her tackle her own. Readers of Sophie Kinsella and Graeme Simsion’s The Rosie Project will want to start at the beginning. … Moyes fans will be clamoring for the return of Louisa Clark.” —Booklist (starred review)

“Jojo's work never fails to bring a smile to my face with her honesty, humour and empathy about what it is to be human—[Still Me is] a must read!” —Emilia Clarke

“You sobbed through Me Before You. You sped through Me After You. And now, Lou is back in Still Me. . .

After You by Jojo Moyes is a heartfelt sequel to Me Before You that follows Louisa Clark as she struggles to rebuild her life after the devastating loss of Will Traynor. The novel is less about the dramatic romance of the first book and more about grief, recovery, guilt, and learning how to keep living when the person who changed your life is gone. Lou is no longer the carefree, quirky young woman she once was. She is older, sadder, and still carrying the emotional weight of the man she loved and lost. Even though she has tried to move on, her life feels stuck. She lives in a small apartment, works at an airport bar, and moves through each day in a kind of fog, unable to fully heal from the past.

The story begins with Lou trying to live in the aftermath of tragedy. She has left behind the old life she shared with Will and is trying to create a new one in London, but her progress is uneven. She is lonely, emotionally exhausted, and often feels as if she has not truly become herself again. The most important event of the novel happens when she falls from her roof one night after drinking, a shocking accident that physically and emotionally jolts her out of the numbness she has been living in. This near-death experience becomes a turning point, forcing her to reconsider how isolated and disconnected she has become. It also brings her into contact with other people in ways that change her life in unexpected directions.

After her accident, Lou is drawn back into the lives of her family, especially her parents, who worry about her but do not fully understand the depth of her sadness. She also becomes connected to a support group for people who have experienced loss, which becomes an important part of her emotional journey. Through this group, she begins to realize that grief does not follow a neat path and that everyone carries sorrow differently. This is one of the novel’s quiet strengths: it shows that healing is messy, uneven, and often frustrating. Lou wants to move forward, but she is also still deeply rooted in memory. She cannot simply “get over” Will or the choices they made together. Instead, she has to learn how to carry those memories without letting them define her entire future.

A major new figure in Lou’s life is Lily Houghton-Miller, a teenage girl who appears at her door claiming to be connected to Will. Lily is difficult, angry, impulsive, and grieving in her own way. She says she is Will’s daughter, a revelation that shocks Lou and complicates everything she thought she knew about Will’s life before he died. Lily has been abandoned by her mother and is now looking for a place to belong, even if she doesn’t quite know how to ask for it. At first, Lou and Lily clash constantly. Lily is sharp-tongued and defensive, while Lou is overwhelmed and unsure how to handle a teenager who is both vulnerable and abrasive. But Lou gradually takes Lily in, and the relationship between them becomes one of the emotional centers of the novel.

Lou’s decision to care for Lily is not easy. It forces her to stretch herself beyond her own pain and to become responsible for someone else’s brokenness while she is still trying to piece herself back together. Yet this responsibility also gives Lou a sense of purpose she has been missing. Through Lily, she begins to see how much she still has to offer the world. The two women are different in age and temperament, but they share a core wound: both are trying to figure out how to survive abandonment. Their relationship is messy and often funny, but it becomes deeply meaningful as they slowly build trust. Lou, in particular, learns how to be a guardian and mentor without losing her own identity.

The book also introduces Sam Fielding, a paramedic who begins to play a growing role in Lou’s life. Sam is compassionate, steady, and grounded—very different from the emotionally intense presence of Will. He is not meant to replace Will, and the novel is careful about that. Instead, Sam represents the possibility of a different kind of relationship, one built less on life-changing drama and more on mutual care and patience. He sees Lou as she is now, not as the woman she used to be, and that matters deeply to her. Their connection grows slowly, with hesitance and tenderness, because Lou is still uncertain whether she is capable of loving again without betraying the memory of what she had before. Sam does not demand she be over her grief; he simply makes room for it.

A lot of the novel’s emotional tension comes from Lou’s conflicting feelings. She wants to honor Will, but she also wants permission to live. She wants to help Lily, but she is afraid of failing her. She wants connection, but she is terrified of being hurt again. Jojo Moyes uses these tensions to create a story that feels intimate and truthful rather than neatly resolved. Lou is not magically transformed. She stumbles, makes mistakes, and sometimes retreats into herself. But she also grows stronger in small, believable ways. She begins to understand that love does not have to be all-consuming to be real, and that surviving loss does not mean erasing the past.

Meanwhile, Lily’s story deepens the novel’s exploration of family and identity. She is angry because she has been abandoned repeatedly, and beneath that anger is a desperate need to know who she is and where she belongs. Lou becomes one of the first people in her life to offer that without judgment. Over time, Lily learns to soften, and Lou learns to be both honest and patient with her. Their bond is not sentimentalized; it is built through shared meals, arguments, awkward confessions, and practical care. That realism makes it more moving. The same is true of Lou’s relationship with her family, which becomes more open and grounded as she allows them to support her rather than shutting them out.

As the story moves forward, Lou must make a choice about what kind of life she wants. She cannot remain suspended forever between grief and memory. The novel does not suggest that she forget Will or stop loving him. Instead, it suggests that love can change shape and still remain part of a person’s life without destroying their ability to move ahead. In that sense, After You is not really about replacing the past. It is about learning that surviving loss does not mean betrayal, and that it is possible to keep a place in your heart for someone who is gone while still making room for new people and new experiences.

By the end of the novel, Lou is not “fixed,” but she is more whole. She has found a fragile but real sense of purpose through Lily, a renewed connection to family, and the beginnings of a new romance with Sam. More importantly, she has started to believe that her life is still hers to shape. After You is ultimately a story about grief that never fully disappears, but becomes part of a larger, richer life. It is gentle, emotional, and honest about how hard it is to go on after devastating loss, while still offering hope that happiness can return in unexpected, imperfect ways.