Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    After I Do: A Novel
    Unavailable
    After I Do: A Novel
    Unavailable
    After I Do: A Novel
    Ebook408 pages5 hours

    After I Do: A Novel

    By Taylor Jenkins Reid

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    Listen to the audiobook instead

    About this ebook

    From the New York Times bestselling author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

    “A seductive twist on the timeless tale of a couple trying to rediscover love in a marriage brought low by the challenges of domestic togetherness…touching, perceptive, and achingly honest.” —Beatriz Williams, New York Times bestselling author

    When Lauren and Ryan’s marriage reaches the breaking point, they come up with an unconventional plan. They decide to take a year off in the hopes of finding a way to fall in love again. One year apart, and only one rule: they cannot contact each other. Aside from that, anything goes.

    Lauren embarks on a journey of self-discovery, quickly finding that her friends and family have their own ideas about the meaning of marriage. These influences, as well as her own healing process and the challenges of living apart from Ryan, begin to change Lauren’s ideas about monogamy and marriage. She starts to question: When you can have romance without loyalty and commitment without marriage, when love and lust are no longer tied together, what do you value? What are you willing to fight for?

    This is a love story about what happens when the love fades. It’s about staying in love, seizing love, forsaking love, and committing to love with everything you’ve got. And above all, After I Do is the story of a couple caught up in an old game—and searching for a new road to happily ever after.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWashington Square Press
    Release dateJul 1, 2014
    ISBN9781476712857
    Author

    Taylor Jenkins Reid

    Taylor Jenkins Reid is the New York Times bestselling author of seven novels, including Malibu Rising, Daisy Jones & The Six, and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their daughter.

    Related to After I Do

    Related ebooks

    Contemporary Women's For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Book

      Oct 30, 2019

      The Book
      20 min read

    • Article

      Face Time With Terry McMillan

      Mar 27, 2020

      Face Time With Terry McMillan
      5 min read

    • Article

      Not That Story

      Oct 28, 2017

      Not That Story
      7 min read

    • Article

      Perfection

      Jun 9, 2020

      For years I could barely write a page. I thought I was becoming a virtuoso of smallness while the grief, which is wordless, occupied an ever-greater volume. My friend lived in the estates on the bad side of town. Let’s go to the forest, she said when

      9 min read

    • Article

      Someone I Used To Know

      Jan 6, 2022

      Someone I Used To Know
      7 min read

    • Article

      Alan Cumming

      Nov 1, 2021

      Alan Cumming
      5 min read

    • Article

      Love, Lust, and More

      Feb 12, 2020

      Fleetwood Mac was singing She is dancing away from you now, and I squirmed in my seat. Kabir was rubbing my thigh as he drove, a gesture I once thought was reserved for me. Bah! I also used to think he only took naked selfies in bed with me, but then

      11 min read

    • Article

      Why, Dad? Why?

      Oct 2, 2022

      Why, Dad? Why?
      7 min read

    • Article

      Daisy’s Day In The Sun

      Jul 12, 2022

      Daisy’s Day In The Sun
      8 min read

    • Article

      Being Elliot Page

      Jun 2, 2022

      Being Elliot Page
      16 min read

    • Article

      How Postcards From My Mother Helped Me Survive Childhood

      Mar 3, 2017

      For years, my mother wrote to me every day. I’d been sent away to boarding school and for the first weeks was forbidden to call home­. I was eleven. This was just before mobile phones came beeping and clicking into the lives of everyday people. I di

      4 min read

    • Article

      Ashleigh Bryant Phillips

      Jun 10, 2020

      Ashleigh Bryant Phillips
      6 min read

    • Article

      Finding Peace—and Briefly, Freedom—at My Grandfather’s Funeral

      Oct 11, 2019

      “Saying goodbye with the people who loved him—and me—I remember that I am not the tomb that imprisons me.”

      6 min read

    • Article

      La Bohème

      Mar 1, 2022

      ON A SATURDAY or Sunday afternoon in the cold early months of 1988, I sat alone at a table for two in a Greenwich Village diner, twenty-four years old, hopelessly young, my notebook open in front of me. At the table next to mine were three people, al

      13 min read

    • Article

      Andi Osho

      Jan 18, 2021

      Andi Osho
      5 min read

    • Article

      I Used to Give Men Mercy

      Feb 12, 2018

      I Used to Give Men Mercy
      12 min read

    • Article

      Name A Song

      Oct 9, 2019

      Name A Song
      12 min read

    • Article

      Cricket League

      Jan 1, 2019

      Lydia Rosenburg, age 10 Bellingham, WA The boy curled against the rundown brick wall, too weak to even sit up. The pain behind his eyelids had dulled to a throb, but now his world was nothing but darkness. How long ago had it happened? Day and night,

      7 min read

    • Article

      Nina Sosanya

      Sep 4, 2023

      Nina Sosanya
      5 min read

    • Article

      A Hard Man To Forget

      Jan 8, 2024

      A Hard Man To Forget
      4 min read

    • Article

      Festival

      Sep 15, 2018

      My husband, who loved festivals, who was a great fan of festivals, wanted to get to the square in time for the first band at eleven o’clock. From bed, the dog and I watched him dress. He tried on various T-shirts, declaring some of them too tight and

      13 min read

    • Article

      Monster

      Dec 1, 2022

      Monster
      7 min read

    • Article

      An Elephant NEVER FORGETS

      May 17, 2023

      An Elephant NEVER FORGETS
      6 min read

    • Article

      Forever Changes

      Apr 25, 2018

      Forever Changes
      7 min read

    Reviews for After I Do

    4/5

    333 ratings21 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      I really liked this one! My TJR rankings now go Evelyn Hugo > After I Do > One True Loves.
    • 5/5
      A multi-story in the sense of following a few different paths of family members following the one year separation of the main character, Lauren, from her husband, Bryan. I really liked the grandmother..... The audio read by Tara Sands was great and I happen to have another CD also read by her in my little pile of CDs to listen to soon! Good!!
    • 5/5
      Personal, enlightening, relatable, and well written. Thoroughly enjoyed this book. It was my first of the author, can’t wait to read something else!
    • 5/5
      Not one of my favorites by her but she is an awesome writer
    • 5/5
      Love Taylor Jenkins Reid
      Always great writing
      Have not read a bad book by her yet!!
    • 4/5
      Good book. Easy read. Marriage that takes a year break.
    • 2/5
      Even though I didn’t like this at all, I’m going to give it 2 stars. It wasn’t badly written or not engaging, it just wasn’t for me.I really dislike this second chance trope, I hated Ryan and I was so rooting for Lauren to move on and find someone else.I will read more of her work, just maybe not another straight romance?
    • 5/5
      I wasn't sure how I felt about this book about halfway through.. It got a little bit boring until I realized it was pretty realistic. This story is about real love, how exciting it is when its first starting, how it can get a little bit boring in the middle when you stop trying so hard, and how to keep it going. I really enjoyed this book! 9/10
    • 3/5
      Bit predictable and the ending was a bit cheesy. Was expecting more ?
    • 2/5
      I found it hard to root for Lauren within her relationship with Ryan. I don't think there was a good message about marriages in this book
    • 5/5
      It is so real and raw. It really makes you think about your own relationships and how we tend to just give up because it’s not perfect anymore or because it’s too hard. This book took you through so many emotions and I loved how much it made me think.
    • 1/5
      So boring, very predictable, it felt like it never really took off, first 2 chapters were ok then it just got so boring
    • 4/5
      I was looking for a feel-good book on Romance & Marriage and this book delivered that for me. There are no huge surprises in the book and some might even call it cliché.

      But I like that the author didn't feel the need to be "un-cliché". I learnt a lot of interesting things about relationships as well.
    • 5/5
      We all want to read books that make us feel all the emotions. After I Do made me laugh, cry, and feel anguish.



      Both Lauren and Ryan are strong-willed people, but sometimes it’s really hard to keep a marriage strong. They do the best thing they can think of without getting a divorce. I think Lauren learns the most. She becomes closer to her family, and learns that she can maybe be happy without Ryan. Lauren is so strong in some areas, and completely lost in others. I think that can be expected when you are no longer in the same house as someone you’ve spent most of your adult years with. Lauren struggles with how she feels, and has to work through some emotional issues just to not feel bitter.



      I love that Lauren has such a strong family connection. Her siblings and mom drive her crazy sometimes, but she loves them fiercely. I also like that each person supports her, but can also give her their opinion on what they think she should do. I do think that Lauren’s biggest hurdle is thinking she is a failure for having a rough go at marriage. It’s not easy, and she begins to understand that. Just because things aren’t working out the way you thought they would doesn’t make you failure.



      There are definitely some emotional parts. When she starts missing Ryan is a big one. I bawled in some areas. What I loved was the humor between Lauren and her brother and sister. They may not have the same relationship choices, but the 3 of them together had me laughing at many times.



      Such a great book, and I can’t say enough how much I loved it!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Love is not static. It changes. It is adaptable. It can grow and it can disappear. It is amazingly special but it isn't easy. It has to be worked at. And if you don't pay attention to it, it can be hidden behind the mundanities of everyday life. When this happens, many people give up, finding it too hard to work their way back to the love they once felt. But are there other options? For Lauren and Ryan, in Taylor Jenkins Reid's newest novel, After I Do, the solution is to take a year off of their marriage to determine if what they once had, the love they once cherished, is worth saving. Lauren and Ryan met in college. Their relationship was charmed, the envy of friends and family. But eleven years in and six years into their marriage, all is not well in Camelot. In fact, things are downright unhappy. Lauren and Ryan don't even want to be in the same room together anymore. They snipe at each other, throwing small unkindnesses at each other, freezing each other out, cutting at each other a thousand ways. They are resentful, irritated, and annoyed with the other most of the time. Things finally come to a head when they acknowledge the state of suppressed warfare in their home and they don't know if their marriage can survive the people they've become. The spark is well and truly gone from their relationship and brutally, truthfully, they aren't in love with each other anymore. But they both remember how it used to be and don't want to let that go without at least trying to recover it. So they agree to be apart for a year, not to contact each other, to focus on what they need individually in order to remember why they fell in love in the first place. Their decision isn't an easy or conventional one but they feel as if it is their only chance to save their marriage. Told mainly through Lauren's experiences, the novel is realistic and honest about the fading of love in the face of small daily resentment after small daily resentment. Reid captures beautifully (and painfully) the building minor aggravations that chip away at the very foundation of happiness, thoughtfulness, and love and how those aggravations ultimately grow so large that they overtake any finer feeling. As their year apart progresses, Lauren reads Ryan's written and saved but unsent emails to her and starts writing her own as well. The sporadic emails allow each of the characters to safely air their grievances, the ways they feel the other has marginalized them, and the things that are so important that they have to change if there will ever be a chance to come back together again. Lauren, with the insights of her mother, her siblings, best friend, and grandmother comes to realize the many shapes that enduring love takes and she must decide if she and Ryan are fighting for happiness and to find a way back to loving each other, as opposed to being "in love" with each other, or if this year apart means that they can and should live without each other. The emotions are so raw and so completely unadorned and truthful here that some portions of the novel are hard to read. As Lauren works back and forth through her own desires and intentions with regard to Ryan's and her future, the reader swings through foreboding, worry, and happiness all in equal measure. Watching the characters lose themselves almost completely is painful and knowing they will be forever changed at the end of their year apart no matter what their ultimate decision is is nerve-wracking. The narrative tension is consistent and the novel is perfectly paced. This is not really a romance but it is definitely a novel about love, knowing what is worth saving, what real, messy love looks like, and the importance of nurturing it before it is gone. Relatable and instructive, it is a novel worth reading for anyone who has been through the ups and downs of marriage or long term relationship.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      I need to get a copy of this for my shelves. I could relate to so much of this book and could see some aspects of my marriage reflected. Marriage is hard work and sometimes painful. I love that this book shows that marriage isn't always an easy happily ever after.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Lauren Spencer meets Ryan Cooper when they are nineteen and in college. They are soon deeply in love, and their relationship strengthens and deepens over the years.

      But eleven years later, when they have been married six years, somehow that deep connection has vanished. They are fighting constantly, avoiding saying what they want from each other to avoid more fighting, and have grown desperately unhappy.

      After a terrible confrontation, they agree on a plan: They will separate for one year, have no contact during that time, and then see if they can put their marriage back together.

      We see that year mainly through Lauren's eyes, as she gradually discovers what she really wants, what she wasn't getting in her marriage, what she wasn't giving, and starts to hear, listen to, and learn from, other people's ideas of marriage--her best friend, her sister, her brother, her mother, her grandmother.

      This is a novel of character and self-examination, and it's extremely well done. In many ways, it's not my kind of novel, taking place so much inside Lauren's head, and yet I couldn't put it down. I like Lauren, her friends, and her family. It is in the end a novel of growth and attachment, not just for Lauren but for those around her, and it's very, very satisfying.

      Recommended.

      I received a free electronic galley from the publisher via NetGalley.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Lauren and Ryan have been married for years, and are basically just sick of each other. They decide to take a year off with no contact in the hopes of finding out if they can improve things or just end the relationship. Lauren's journey is all about self-discovery and finding out the meaning of marriage and relationships. Really well written, this story is about what I believe to be a common occurrence in many relationships, and one way of resolving the stagnation and finding a way back to each other. Insightful.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      This one gets ALL of the stars but I can't quite tell you why right now because I am too busy trying to mop up my tears.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      A married couple separates for a year when they’re struggling.I loved Lauren’s relationships with her family, especially her supportive sister and feisty grandma. Those relationships helped give the book a bit of depth.“Isn’t it nice … once you’ve outgrown the ideas of what life should be and you just enjoy what it is.”“The sun will rise no matter what pain we encounter. No matter how much we believe the world to be over, the sun will rise.”“Why do we do this? Why do we undervalue things when we have them? Why is it only on the verge of losing something that we see how much we need it?”
    • 5/5
      I finished this book in one night. Definitely recommend for anyone that has ever been in love or has loved before. Especially recommended for anyone who has seen the tough side of loving someone. Charming and sensitive, this book does a great job of approaching a very realistic and common reality in a down to earth, honest manner. I also really enjoyed some of the connections the book makes from beginning to end that helps bring the story full circle, in my opinion. Read it!