Me Before You Review

Title – Me Before You.

Author – Jojo Moyes.

Publisher/Publish Date – Penguin Books – 26th April 2016 (Movie Tie-in)

Pages – 400.

Summary from Goodreads.

They had nothing in common until love gave them everything to lose . . .

Louisa Clark is an ordinary girl living an exceedingly ordinary life—steady boyfriend, close family—who has barely 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?
My Thoughts – Five out of Five Stars.

This review contains spoilers.

As I am sitting down to write this, I still haven’t fully processed this book. It has taken me a long time to write this review, I read the book a little over a month ago and I am still heartbroken. I am going to try my best, so here goes.

Louisa Clarke loses her job at a local cafe and through the job centre finds a position being a companion for Will Traynor who is in a wheelchair because of an accident that happened a few years before. I love Lou or as Will calls her Clarke. I adored everything about her character and I felt so connected to her as I was reading that I felt like she could have been my friend. Lou takes this job as she needs the money to help provide for not only herself but for her whole family. I must admit at the start I really didnt like the way Will treated Lou, I can understand why he acted like that but I still didn’t like it. However just like Lou I grew to love Will. Lou has been working for a little while when she overhears a conversation that will change her life. Will wants to go to Switzerland to commit suicide. I know that this is a hard subject to talk about so I’m not going to go into details. Once Lou hears that she hands in her notice and leaves, however Mrs Traynor who is Will’s mum convinces her to stay. Thats when Lou realises why her work contract is only for 6 months, they want her to help Will change his mind. Ofcourse other things happen which I won’t go into to much detail because this review would be pages long. Lou and Nathan (Will’s carer) start to plan outings for Will as he is reluctant to leave the house. Some are a disaster and others go really well. The last outing Lou plans is a holiday away where the events there were the start on the end, also the start of my tears. Lou tells Will thay she loves him and that they could be together, Will on the other hand says that it isnt enough. Lou comes back from the holiday heartbroken and leaves the Traynor household and goes home. Not long after Mrs Traynor comes to see Lou and tells her that Will wants her to be there with him when it happens. Even now it is bringing tears to my eyes. At first Lou doesnt want to go but in the end she decides she needs to be there. For the whole end part of the book I was crying and I dont just mean a few tears I was completly ugly crying and was at the stage where I could hardly keep reading. My heart was ripped out of my chest and stamped on.

I’m going to go into a little detail about a few of the characters who I loved and didnt love. I’m not mentioning all of the characters.

Lou – As I have already said I adored Lou. She was quirky (bumblebee tights), emotional, showed her strong side but also showed her weaknesses.

Will – I grew to love Will. At first I was annoyed with him for treating Lou the way he did, but he grew on me and I connected with him well.

Nathan – Nathan was a lovely adition to the story. I loved his personality.

Patrick – I didnt like Patrick one bit. He was egotistical, unthoughtful and didnt care about Lou. I disliked him so much I forgot his name.

So back to the book and a quick final word. This book was heartbreakingly beautiful and it will stick with me and will have a place in my heart forever. I have not felt this emotionally connected to a story before however this is a story I will forever be connected with.

My Favourite Quotes: 

Here are just a short list of my favourite quotes. 

• “You are scored on my heart,Clark. You were from the first day you walked in,with your ridiculous clothes and your complete inability to ever hide a single thing you felt.”

• “Hey Clark’, he said.’Tell me something good’. I stared out of the window at the bright-blue Swiss sky and I told him a story of two people. Two people who shouldn’t have met, and who didn’t like each other much when they did, but who found they were the only two people in the world who could possibly have understood each other. And I told him of the adventures they had, the places they had gone, and the things I had seen that I had never expected to. I conjured for him electric skies and iridescent seas and evenings full of laughter and silly jokes. I drew a world for him, a world far from a Swiss industrial estate, a world in which he was still somehow the person he had wanted to be. I drew the world he had created for me, full of wonder and possibility.” 

• “Push yourself. Don’t settle. Wear those stripy legs with pride.”

• “It has been, the best six months of my entire life. “Funnily enough, Clark, mine too.”

Well people thank you for reading this review, I am leaving it there because I can feel myself getting emotional again.

If you have any thoughts Please feel free to comment.

Happy Reading 🙂

Lauren

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