Ellie Lerner is a typical thirty-something woman trying to find the balance between the demands of a busy career and her personal life in the quiet suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts. Luckily for her, she has her best friend Lucy to lend her support. Too bad she happens to live on the other side of the Big Pond. Yet despite their distance, these two childhood friends manage to remain close at heart. There is no problem big or small that would ever keep them apart.
While walking her daughter to school one fall day, Lucy is brutally murdered. Without giving it a second thought, Ellie rushes to England to console Greg, Lucy's grieving husband, and her eight-year-old daughter Sophie. In the blink of an eye, Lucy's perfect family is shattered into pieces leaving her dearest friend Ellie the burden of trying to make it whole again.
In hopes of helping both Greg and Sophie come to terms with Lucy's death, Ellie selflessly takes on the role of surrogate mother and friend. As the days turn into weeks, Ellie finds herself becoming more attached to Sophie than she ever had expected. Realizing she can't bring herself to return to the States, she informs her husband that she's not coming home.
As the three mourners struggle to move past their grief, they soon realize that Lucy, the mother, wife, and friend they thought they knew, kept secrets locked safely away in her heart. Making the choice to move on and accept Lucy for who she was is a mountain these three wounded souls fear to climb.
AFTER YOU is a powerful novel expertly written with elements of deception, denial, and most importantly redemption that challenge the reader to question how well we really know the ones we love. Buxbaum's innate ability to reach out to the reader and make such an emotional connection makes AFTER YOU this fall's must-read selection.
Julie
Buxbaum, the acclaimed author of The Opposite of Love,
delivers a haunting, gloriously written novel about love,
family, and the secrets we hide from each otherβand
ourselves.
It happened on a tree-lined street in Notting
Hill to a woman who seemed to have the perfect life. Ellie
Lernerβs best friend, Lucy, was murdered in front of her
young daughter. And, as best friends do, Ellie dropped
everythingβher marriage, her job, her life in the Boston
suburbsβto travel to London and pick up the pieces of
Lucyβs life. While Lucyβs 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
novelβs winding passageways, its story of hurt, magic, and
healing blooms around them. But so, too, do Lucyβs secretsβ
some big, some smallβsecrets Lucy kept hidden, even from
her best friend. Over a summer in London, as Ellie peels
back the layers of her friendβs life, sheβs forced to
confront her own as well: the marriage she left behind,
the loss sheβd hoped to escape. And suddenly Ellieβs
carefully constructed existence is spinning out of control
in a chain of events that will transform her lifeβand
those around herβforever.
A novel that will resonate in
the heart of anyone whoβs 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.
No excerpt available.
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