“Know first who you are and then adore yourself accordingly.”

Lou Clark is back in our lives and it is glorious.!

My wonderful husband took me to Barnes & Nobel after our Valentine’s dinner and told me what every girl wants to hear, “Pick a book out, and don’t use your Christmas gift card.” Swoon.

A bit spoilery.

Do we really need a trilogy of Louisa Clark novels? Probably not, but she is clearly a beloved character (/ money maker) and Jojo Moyes is trying to give her fans what they want (/ buy a private island). Having torn through Moyes’ entire catalog I now must wait for her genius brain to write new books each year to satisfy my need for strong but flawed romantic heroines. Still Me picks up where After You leaves off. Louisa is on her way to New York, even though she has a budding new relationship with Ambulance Sam back home, to work for the billionaire family her friend, a fellow Will Traynor mourner, Nathan referred her to. Lou is still haunted by and propelled forward in some ways by her relationship with Will whose mother forwards Lou letters her son sent her while he was in New York working before his accident. These help her find some footing in her new city.

The woman Louisa is to keep company, as part assistant part paid friend, is Agnes Gopnik, a Polish masseuse who married a former client and is ostrichized by the women in the New York society pages. The two women become friendly and Lou begins enjoying her strange new job. The happier Lou finds herself in her job the more insecure she feels about her long distance relationship with Sam.

“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 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.”

A few months into her employment Agnes turns on Lou to safe guard her own secret. Just like that Lou is out of a job in an unfamiliar country which unexpectedly helps Louisa discover what she really wants. Moyes gives the reader a throwaway line of dialog to explain why Lou isn’t sent back to England but overall the narrative between life with the Gopniks and life in New York after being fired was a bit too seamless. I was also immensely disappointed that Moyes introduced Louisa’s next love interest while she was still in a relationship because it creates a pattern that is a bit unflattering. Sure, in both instances she doesn’t act until she is “in the clear” so to speak but it is still troubling.

All in all I felt that Louisa’s missteps and subsequent growth rang true to life, even if the scenarios were less than realistic. Still Me isn’t a perfect book and if it was a novel about new characters I would probably give it 3 or even 2.5 Stars but love is blind and my affection for Lou Clark masks some of the more flawed plot points.