Author: Jojo Moyes
Publisher: Penguin Books
Release Date: January 5, 2012
Summary:
Louisa Clark is an ordinary girl 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?
Rating: ★★★★★
Review:
I went into this book believing it to be a typical contemporary romance and instead found a book that shattered me to the core and made me question everything I knew and thought about what determines a life worth living.
Everyone has read this book within the past couple months, so I was hesitant to get on the bandwagon. With huge hype comes the potential for huge disappointment. But my doubts were quickly forgotten when I started this book. I was instantly addicted. I was on a holiday in Florida and spent two of the days outside by the pool, devouring this book rather than spending time with my family (oops).
What surprised me most: This book is so much more than a romance.
I thought I had this book pinned down. Girl meets boy (who happens to be quadriplegic). Boy and girl fall in love. Girl saves boy. Happily ever after.
Simple and overdone, right?
Nope. I wasn't even close.
This book was so much deeper than I had ever imagined it would be. It touches on a hard subject: what constitutes a life worth living? And it had me rethinking everything I had ever believed about the subject of the right to die. It made me think more than most of the books I've read this year, so much more than I expected from what was supposed to be a stereotypical contemporary romance.
The characters in this book grabbed my heart. Louisa "Lou" Clarke is not your stereotypical heroine. She's beyond quirky, somewhat awkward, and expresses herself in an array of rather unique outfits. I loved her relationship with her family, which felt so real. There aren't too many books that decide to take time away from the romance to develop a family structure, and I was really impressed with how it was built. Specifically, I was impressed with Lou's relationship with her sister. I have a sister, and the constant back and forth between being completely annoyed to being the best of friends was depicted perfectly.
I also really enjoyed the characterization of Will Traynor. At first I was skeptical. The "rich guy who has lived his life to the fullest" has been done a million times before, but I think it was the right choice and really emphasized his loss after the accident that leaves him a quadriplegic. Will was the right amounts of sarcastic and bitter, and I felt his pain in a way that left me literally sobbing.
This book has rocked me to the core, has left me a sobbing mess, and I loved every second of it. It blew away every expectation I had, and makes me want to read more contemporary fiction in the future.
