Me Before You

Me Before You

Author : Jojo Moyes

Genre: Romance, Narrative

Publisher : Viking Penguin  

Year : 2012

Ranking : 4.8/ 5

 

Synopsis

Lou Clark knows lots of things. She knows how many footsteps there are between the bus stop and home. She knows she likes working in The Buttered Bun tea shop and she knows she might not love her boyfriend Patrick.

What Lou doesn't know is she's about to lose her job or that knowing what's coming is what keeps her sane.

Will Traynor knows his motorcycle accident took away his desire to live. He knows everything feels very small and rather joyless now and he knows exactly how he's going to put a stop to that.

What Will doesn't know is that Lou is about to burst into his world in a riot of color. And neither of them knows they're going to change the other for all time.

The Author

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.

Personal Experience with This Book

I normally do not read this kind of books. I actually try to avoid them. The reason is basically because I do not want to read something that makes me feel sad and cry. However, I just heard so many good things about this book and, for some reason I saw the book everywhere I went so I took it as a signal for me to read it.

At the beginning I felt the story was ok. I mean I was prepared already for everything that was going to happen. I set my mind in not to cry and take it easy. But, I did not count with Will’s personality. This guy is just one of the best characters I have ever read about. He is amazing… he just blows you away with his sense of humor, intelligence, charisma, sarcasm, etc. The way he looks at his life is pretty sad but I do not think anyone could actually understand what he was feeling about himself, neither Lou or his parents did so I could not do it myself.

Lou is a precious character as well. She is so easy going and simple that you actually feel identified with her in many ways. Like she is the younger you… but she is even older than you. What I did not like about Lou is the way she actually does not know what to do with her life… she is just there… waiting for nothing extraordinary to happen. She does not even know if she wants to get serious with her own boyfriend. I guess everyone feels that way at some point in their lives but… for that quantity of time.. it made me so mad reading about how she didn’t even care.

Talking about the plot. It gets you. I think it actually makes you think a lot. At the end of the book I was just sitting there thinking… how would I live in a situation like that… what would I do… would I ask my parents to do something like that or would I try to live at my best? And I could not find an answer… it is such a hard situation and it actually gives you thinking about the way you are living your life and what you can do to make it better… just as will said: “Live with love. Live”

About the writing style of the author I have no complains. I really think she gave us different points of view – I would have loved to have more from Will’s point of view though.  The reading is very light and after just few chapters you already are into the story so I really liked it. 

Links 

1. Goodreads
2. Amazon