After You- Julie Buxbaum

After You- Julie Buxbaum

From the publisher-

It happened on a tree-lined street in Notting Hill to a woman who seemed to have the perfect life. Ellie Lerner’s best friend, Lucy, was murdered in front of her young daughter. And, as best friends do, Ellie dropped everything—her marriage, her job, her life in the Boston suburbs—to travel to London and pick up the pieces of Lucy’s life. While Lucy’s husband, Greg, copes with his grief by retreating into himself, eight-year-old Sophie has simply stopped speaking.

Desperate to help Sophie, Ellie turns to a book that gave her comfort as a child, The Secret Garden. As the two spend hours exploring the novel’s winding passageways, its story of hurt, magic, and healing blooms around them. But so, too, do Lucy’s secrets—some big, some small—secrets Lucy kept hidden, even from her best friend. Over a summer in London, as Ellie peels back the layers of her friend’s life, she’s forced to confront her own as well: the marriage she left behind, the loss she’d hoped to escape. And suddenly Ellie’s carefully constructed existence is spinning out of control in a chain of events that will transform her life—and those around her— forever. A novel that will resonate in the heart of anyone who’s had a best friend, a love lost, or a past full of regrets, After You proves once again the unique and compelling talent of Julie Buxbaum.

I'm in the middle with this one. I can't say that it was a bad, but I can't say it was good either.

I did love the characters. They were flawed, and real. Ellie, Greg, and Sophie were the reasons why I kept reading. I really wanted to know what would happen with them, I wanted the perfect ending with them all happy, and content with what life threw at them. I liked that Ellie was reading The Secret Garden to Sophie, and the parts where they discussed the book. I also enjoyed when the went to the garden that inspired the author of The Secret Garden .

I didn't like that the story really never went anywhere. It was about how one copes with the tragic death of a loved one. Every page was about the emotions they were feeling, and how they were trying to move on. Nothing happened. Ellie is also dealing with the falling apart of her marriage, and what that means to her, and her life. The secret that Lucy has is not that big of a deal, story wise. It didn't spice up the book, turn it up a notch, it did nothing.

I'm not saying it was a bad book, I just think that it isn't my type of book.


Rating: 3/5