- Published: 02/01/2012
- 385 pages
- Format: Paperback
- Rating:
Louisa Clark is an ordinary young woman living an exceedingly ordinary life—steady boyfriend, close family—who has never been farther afield than their tiny village. She takes a badly needed job working for ex-Master of the Universe Will Traynor, who is wheelchair-bound after an accident. Will has always lived a huge life—big deals, extreme sports, worldwide travel—and now he’s pretty sure he cannot live the way he is.
Will is acerbic, moody, bossy—but Lou refuses to treat him with kid gloves, and soon his happiness means more to her than she expected. When she learns that Will has shocking plans of his own, she sets out to show him that life is still worth living.
A love story for this generation, Me Before You brings to life two people who couldn’t have less in common—a heartbreakingly romantic novel that asks, What do you do when making the person you love happy also means breaking your own heart?
Me Before You is one of my choices for The Fiction Cafe Book Club Reading challenge 2018: 4. Read a book with a love triangle in it.
It’s taken me few days to get around writing this review. Not only because I’ve been busy but mainly as I needed some time for emotional recovery. We were reading this book together two friends and book buddies Kate and Meghan and we shared our opinions afterwards. We have pretty much agreed on everything and supported each other through our heartbreaks which was probably the most important thing.
Let me begin this review with saying, I have seen the movie based on this book, when it came out and LOVED IT. Yes, it made me cry but also made me laugh and definitely made me think. That would be one of the reasons why I’ve decided to read the book even if I’ve already knew the story (I never ever do that and this was the first for me). Usually books tend to be a lot better than movies, there can be hardly whole book covered in one and half hour long movie, so there is no surprise that this book still gave me so much more and better insight to the story than movie ever did. Saying that, I still loved the film and it is still one of my favourite films I’ve seen to date.
Me Before You is such a powerful, heartwarming and heartbreaking story. I’ve never read anything by Jojo Moyes before but can’t wait to follow her from now on. I really enjoyed her writing style, the way how with pure words it sucked you right in, made you care for characters so deeply and just fall in love with them. It had a great balance of fun and heart-crushing moments, while touching very sensitive subject.
Lou as a force of nature with her amazingly beautiful and bubbly personality, finds herself one day without job, without future plans, stuck in her local job centre looking for a job. Out of desperation, she accepts interview for a carer/companion to wheelchair-bound Will Traynor, adrenaline and adventure junkie who is now unable to do anything and hates his life after accident. Their relationship is less than profesional, it’s more like non existent at the beginning. Lou is trying to survive her long, very long days at work, while Will ignores her most of the time. Lou is determined to stay in this job, her only chance to make money and starts working on her plan to make Will see, he can still live and enjoy living, that there are ways to live even with his disability and they form friendship over this, maybe more than friendship.
Their story, their bonding is what makes this book so amazing. They are so different but teach each other so much about life, about future, about what is important and how you can take everything away from someone but should never take their free will.
This book will stay with me for a very long time, I can’t recommend it enough and I am looking forward to read following books After you and Still me soon.
I will leave you with GIF of my favourite moment from the book/movie. Thank you for reading and let me know what you thought about this book if you have read it.
About Jojo Moyes
Jojo Moyes is a British novelist.
Moyes studied at Royal Holloway, University of London. She won a bursary financed by The Independent newspaper to study journalism at City University and subsequently worked for The Independent for 10 years. In 2001 she became a full time novelist.
Moyes’ novel Foreign Fruit won the Romantic Novelists’ Association (RNA) Romantic Novel of the Year in 2004.
She is married to journalist Charles Arthur and has three children.
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Wonderfully written review! I just finished reading this book and while I personally loved it for the realistic quality of the characters.
What I enjoyed most I think was the fact that not everything worked out as expected. At first I thought that when Mrs. Traynor called up Louisa to come to the hospital in Switzerland that it was because Will had finally changed his mind about the suicide. However, of course, that is not what happened. I found the ending unique in which Louisa finally found her strength and was able to walk away from her heartache and fear and finally make something of herself outside of her little English town.
Anyway, I look forward to more of your reviews in the future … happy reading!!!
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Thank you, sometimes we need ‘unhappy’ ending to feel closer to reality. Unfortunately life is also about heartbreak and about finding ways to move on and change our future. I’m yet to read ‘After me’ and ‘Still me’ to see how really did Lou get on with her life without Will.
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This book broke me!!!
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Yes I loved this one as well although I have deliberately not picked up After You and Still Me because I want the story to finish here really, I don’t really need a sequel of this one because I feel it can’t be as good as the first ;-). Maybe you will prove me otherwise with your review, we’ll see 🙂
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A lot of people actually said the same, I’ve already bought After you, even though I’ve heard is not as good. I feel I will like it.
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