After I Do
Taylor Jenkins Reid, 2014
A marriage goes quiet, and a wife and husband take a year apart to find out whether love can be rebuilt or only remembered.
Feels like longing, melancholy and hope. About love, family and time.
A page from the book
The loudest argument is the one nobody is having.
He walks around in a long, wide circle, going up and down the hills of the Dodger Stadium parking lot. I follow close behind, waiting with him at the crosswalks, crossing at his pace. We don’t say anything. I think of how much I want to scream at him. I think of how I wanted to scream at him last night, too. I think of how much I’ll probably want to scream at him tomorrow. I can only imagine he’s thinking much of the same. And yet the air between us is perfectly still, uninterrupted by any of our thoughts. So often lately, our nights and weekends are full of tension, a tension that is only relieved by saying good-bye or good night. Taylor Jenkins Reid.Reid worked as a school administrator in Los Angeles before writing full time; After I Do, her second novel, appeared in 2014.
Books that feel like this
More by Taylor Jenkins Reid
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Taylor Jenkins Reid, 2017
A reclusive screen legend picks an unknown journalist to write her life story, and starts with the seven husbands.
Daisy Jones & The Six
Taylor Jenkins Reid, 2019
A rock band's rise, told as an oral history by everyone who lived it—and the singer at the center no one can agree on.
Malibu Rising
Taylor Jenkins Reid, 2021
One family, one legendary Malibu party, and the marriage that made them: famous parents, and the children left holding the house.
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Questions readers ask
- What is After I Do like?
- Feels like longing, melancholy and hope. About love, family and time.
- What should I read after After I Do?
- If you liked After I Do, try Heart Bones (Colleen Hoover), One Day in December (Josie Silver) and The Lucky One (Nicholas Sparks).
A taste of the feed
The theory that damage shapes us more than kindness ever could.
Sometimes I believe personalities are shaped more by damage than kindness. Kindness doesn’t sink as deep into your skin as the damage does. The damage stains your soul so bad, you can’t scrub it off. It stays there forever, and I feel like people can see all my damage just by looking at me.
Heart Bones · Colleen Hoover
What you do when the chance is pulling away without you.
No! No! Oh God, don’t you dare drive away from this stop! It’s Christmas! I want to yell, even as the bus pulls out into the traffic and gathers pace, and outside he is breathless standing in the road, watching us leave. I see defeat turn out the light in his eyes, and because it’s Christmas and because I’ve just fallen hopelessly in love with a stranger at a bus stop, I blow him a forlorn kiss and lay my forehead against the glass, watching him until he’s out of sight.
One Day in December · Josie Silver
When you stop hearing from someone, what story do you tell yourself?
Every now and then, I’d meet a guy and think that we were getting along great, and suddenly I’d stop hearing from him. Not only did he stop calling, but if I happened to bump into him sometime later he always acted like I had the plague. I didn’t understand it. I still don’t. And it bothered me. It hurt me. With time, it got harder and harder to keep blaming the guys, and I eventually came to the conclusion that there was something wrong with me. That maybe I was simply meant to live my life alone.
The Lucky One · Nicholas Sparks
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