After You

by Julie Buxbaum

[Leah]

When Ellie learns of the murder of her best friend Lucy, she does what any friend would do, and drops everything and heads to London to look after Lucy’s daughter, Sophie, and to pick up the pieces. Sophie, as expected, is struggling with her mum’s death and has stopped talking. Desperate to get the little girl to open up again, Ellie decides that the best course of action is to read a book with her. Ellie chooses The Secret Garden, a book that helped her get through childhood, and hopes it will do the same for Sophie. As Sophie and Greg get used to Ellie being around, and begin to piece their lives back together, Ellie is in danger of losing her life in America and her husband. Making her decision harder still is the things she finds out about Lucy, things she would never have expected of her best friend and make Ellie look at her in a whole new light. As secrets come out, will Ellie ever be able to let go of Sophie and will she end up ruining her marriage in the process?

After finally – finally – picking up Julie Buxbaum’s debut novel The Opposite of Love, I was stunned by how much I enjoyed it. It was well-written, it was different to most chick lit I read, and it made me cry. I know that’s probably not the most auspicious of reasons to love a book, but only the good ones are able to reduce me to tears. So I was so pleased to read Julie had a new book due to be released called After You and I was even happier when I received a copy. I had a quick look over the book and eagerly started it, thinking it would take me a couple of days to finish, but I actually managed it in about 5/6 hours, as it was literally unputdownable.

Whereas Julie’s first novel The Opposite of Love begins with a rather shocking opener where the main protagonist Emily dreams she cut her boyfriend up into hundreds of little pieces before eating him, the opener for After You is far tamer, but is still thought-provoking; “Let’s pretend things are different. That in the last couple of days, I haven’t become the kind of person who resorts to wishing on eyelashes, first stars of the night and 11:11, am and pm, in earnest and with my eyes closed.” It’s poignant, and sets the scene for us to dive right into the book. And we are, we’re plunged right into the situation Ellie is facing: a dead best friend, murdered no less, a mute god-daughter, a distraught husband and Ellie thousands of miles away from home. There’s no pre-empt, we don’t know anything that happened beforehand, just what happens in the aftermath of Lucy’s death.

While Ellie uses the outward excuse that the only reason she’s staying in London is because of Sophie, there’s also something bubbling under the surface that tells us that while that may be true, Sophie does need Ellie, Ellie also appears to need that break away from her husband, Phillip, and away from the US. It’s not easily apparent why, we learn that a bit later on, but it is apparent that something has made Ellie want to get away from it all and Sophie and Greg are the perfect excuse, despite the circumstances within which it happens. It’s definitely a multi-layered plot and it had a lot of depth to it. With everything Ellie has to deal with, the death of her best friend, her best friend’s distraught family and being away from home, Ellie also learns a lot about Lucy, things she never would have expected to learn and certainly not things she expected her best friend to keep from her, plunging their friendship into doubt. What really makes the book, though, is the relationship Ellie and Sophie forge together. Their bond becomes stronger and stronger and was a huge reason why I loved the book so much.

While in The Opposite of Love it took me a while to warm to Emily, I found it the complete opposite in After You when it came to Ellie. In fact, I loved Ellie right from the off. Not many people would sacrifice their own lives to head to London to help her dead best friend’s family. Yes, there was ulterior motives there, but still, it’s quite something for her to do. Ellie has her faults, don’t get me wrong, but on the whole she’s an easily likeable character and I could understand her reasonings for doing what she does. I also must admit as this juncture that I also felt complete sympathy for Phillip, Ellie’s husband, because it was clear to see his side of the story as well, missing his wife, having her thousands of miles away, and I could also understand everything he did. My absolute favourite character, though, was Sophie, Lucy’s daughter and Ellie’s god-daughter. She is without a doubt my favourite child character in any novel. She was so switched on for a 8-year-old and her observations were spot on most of the time. But despite all that, she still had her moments where it was clear to see that losing her mum hurt like hell and Buxbaum portrayed Sophie beautifully with the right mix of sadness but resilience. We also learn a lot about Lucy, as I’ve mentioned, but I find it hard to truly judge her because the fact of the matter is she couldn’t defend herself because she was dead so I hold my judgement of her. I also couldn’t really get a handle on Greg, Lucy’s husband, he just didn’t click with me.

Like The Opposite of Love, After You was written incredibly well. It was told entirely from Ellie’s point of view which worked brilliantly and Julie’s writing just blows me away. There is absolutely no way her books can be classed as Chick Lit, certainly not the light and airy Chick Lit you can get, this is grittier and it deals with some pretty serious issues. There’s no real happiness in the book – how can it be a happy book when an important person in the lives of our characters has died? But it doesn’t get bogged down with sadness, not at all, and although the book didn’t make me cry, I absolutely loved it. With both of Julie’s books I’ve never been sure of how they would end. There’s no optimism that it will all turn out OK, just real, proper, grown up relationships and I truly wasn’t sure what would happen to Sophie and Greg or Ellie and Phillip. After You blew me away, it really did, and I lapped up every single word of it. Julie Buxbaum is hugely talented and I eagerly await a third book.