Still Me…

About the Book:

The third Lou Clark novel by Jojo Moyes, following the number one international bestsellers Me Before You and After You.

 

Lou Clark arrives in New York ready to start a new life, confident that she can embrace this new adventure and keep her relationship with Ambulance Sam alive across several thousand miles. She is hurled into the world of the super-rich Gopniks: Leonard and his much younger second wife, Agnes, and a never-ending array of household staff and hangers-on. Lou is determined to get the most out of the experience and throws herself into her job and New York life within this privileged world.

 

Before she knows what’s happening, Lou is mixing in New York high society, where she meets Joshua Ryan, a man who brings with him a whisper of her past.

 

In Still Me, as Lou tries to keep the two sides of her world together, she finds herself carrying secrets – not all her own – that cause a catastrophic change in her circumstances. And when matters come to a head, she has to ask herself: Who is Louisa Clark? And how do you reconcile a heart that lives in two places?

 

 

My Thoughts:

I wonder, when Jojo Moyes first created Louisa Clark in Me Before You, if she had any idea just how larger than life this character would become. Even after three books, I still feel as though Louisa has plenty to offer and I’d happily pick up a fourth book about her. I enjoyed Still Me slightly more than After You. In After You, Louisa was very much still finding her feet after the loss of Will and now, since reading Still Me, I feel as though After You was a bit of a bridge connecting the Lou from Me Before You with the Lou in Still Me. They really are a lovely set of books, so heartfelt and entertaining.

 

In Still Me, Lou is in New York, trying her hardest to ‘say yes’ to as many things as possible in a bid at following Will’s advice to ‘live boldly’. And live boldly she does, although not necessarily always in the way she might have preferred. This was a wonderful story, filled with all of the things we love about Lou, combined with a New York atmosphere that was so richly detailed, I could envisage it perfectly. I’ve always wanted to go to New York and I feel as though I had a little taster while reading Still Me, that’s how well demonstrated the setting was by Jojo Moyes. And if like me, you really love Lou’s family, don’t be concerned about the distance between New York and London. They’re still there, proud as punch of Lou and ready to regale her via email, letters, phone calls and visits, with tales on all she’s missing from home.

 

There are plenty of highs and lows for Lou in Still Me, as well as some really lovely reminiscing about Will. Ambulance Sam features strongly, but I don’t want to spoil any of that for you, so suffice to say, he’s there and a lot goes on between him and Lou along the way. As always seems to be the case with Lou, people take advantage of her kindness, but the flip side to this is those who see her for who she really is and help her along the way. Just like when she met Will, Lou forges a relationship with another lonely soul in Still Me, and through kindness, she changes that person’s life, along with her own, entirely for the better.

 

As is usual with Jojo Moyes, I found myself crying on one page only to be laughing through my tears on the next. The British humour is as prevalent as always and the authenticity of Lou, the most perfectly imperfect woman to ever grace the page, remains intact. All the stars for Still Me and I truly hope we can continue to follow Lou for many books to come.

“There are so many versions of ourselves we can choose to be. Once, my life was destined to be measured out in the most ordinary of steps. I learnt differently from a man who refused to accept the version of himself he’d been left with, and an old lady who saw, conversely, that she could transform herself, right up to a point when many people would have said there was nothing left to be done.
I had a choice. I was Louisa Clark from New York or Louisa Clark from Stortfold. Or there might be a whole other Louisa I hadn’t yet met. The key was making sure that anyone you allowed to walk beside you didn’t get to decide which you you were, and pin you down like a butterfly in a case. The key was to know that you could always somehow find a way to reinvent yourself again.”

 

Still Me is published by Penguin Random House Australia.

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About the Author:

Jojo Moyes was raised in London. She writes for the Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, Red and Woman & Home. She’s married to Charles Arthur, technology editor of The Guardian. They live with their three children on a farm in Essex, England.
https://www.jojomoyes.com