After You

by Julie Buxbaum

When Ellie's best friend Lucy was murdered on the street in front of her eight-year-old daughter Sophie, Ellie flies to London to help her friend's family pick up the pieces. As Sophie and her father Greg begin to heal, Ellie learns things about her best friend that she never knew. And Ellie has to confront the real reason she left her home and husband to travel to London to help Lucy's family.

This is the long-awaited second book from this author. I loved, loved, loved her first book - The Opposite of Love - and couldn't wait to read this. It did not disappoint. Ellie is also a woman who seems to be her own worst enemy when it comes to life choices. But I could totally relate to the way Ellie thought, felt, and dealt with the things thrown at her. What seemed to be decisions made out of grief, soon because habit for Ellie and to fix her marriage and in essence, her entire life, she has to unlearn those habits.

I can't say enough about this author and the women she creates. Even Lucy, although we never met her while she is alive, is a complex and conflicted woman. Ellie's mother is another example. She is seemingly flighty and thoughtless, but we come to see another side of her that I could relate too. It seemed to me that the central question of this book was "What would you give up for love?"

Go read this book and The Opposite of Love. You can thank me later.