Me Before You (Me Before You Trilogy, #1)

by Jojo Moyes

[Leah]

Me Before You by JoJo Moyes has been on my to-read list since it came out. It’s been sititng on my shelf, waiting for me to pick it up, but it’s taken me a while. This book has been a phenomenal success, it has over 3,000 reviews on Amazon UK and most of those are positive. Critics loved it, it’s sold billions of copies, it probably has a film in the works and it has brought JoJo to the front of everyone’s minds. Her author level has gone stratospheric! That’s a lot of pressure to heap onto one book so I’ve always stayed clear. But, you can only steer clear of a great novel for so long and eventually you cave and read it. I knew exactly what I was getting in to when I started Me Before You, but I didn’t care, I just wanted to experience the magical novel everyone else has already read and discussed, and it was amazing.

Every so often a book comes along that truly blows you away, that’s so well written, you can’t believe you’ve just read a 450 page book in just one day, and Me Before You is that book. It’s special. So special that, despite the fact I knew pretty much the bare bones of the novel before I started it, it didn’t really matter. Because I just knew I was in for a stunning read, and it was. When Lou and Will are brought together, in the most awful of circumstances, Will after a motorcycle accident leaves him quadreplegic, and Lou after losing her job, it almost seems too good to be true when the man at the job center tells Lou there’s a position available, to be Will’s carer and the pay will more than help her parents stay afloat of their bills and stuff. She wonders what the catch is, why Will’s mother Camille hired her to look after Will instead of someone with way more caring experience, but it’s not the caring that Will needs, it’s the bright, bold Lou, to brighten up his days, and perhaps show him that despite his accident, there can be a way to live with his ‘now’ life.

After I had read Cecelia Ahern’s new novel How To Fall In Love, I was asked if it was very similar to Me Before You. I had no idea, of course, because I hadn’t read Me Before You. Now that I have, I can say that yes, they are similar. They are both about showing someone who doesn’t want to live that there is a life out there for you. Though, they’re in very different ways. Adam in How To Fall In Love, isn’t disabled. Will is. That’s a different kettle of fish right off the bat, but the simple premise of both novels is inherently similar, done in very differnt ways by two very different writers. Both books blew me away, both books amazed me in different ways. Inevitable comparisons will be made, but I just say: Enjoy both books for what they are because they are both really, really special.

Me Before You was just amazing, the whole entirely book just captivated me from the start. Lou was such a lovely, vibrant character and I so adored the way she dressed, and wished I could be more like her. I loved her enthusiasm, and felt quite sad that she had ended up staying stuck in the town she grew up in, because she was like a big fish in a little pond. Despite Will’s well-deserved bitterness about his situation, I loved him too. I loved how he let Lou win him around and came back to life, a bit more, page after page. How, soon, it was him telling Lou he wanted to go out and not the other way around, that gave me hope. It made me smile. I loved his and Lou’s relationship because she just talked to him like a normal person, not like he was an invalid or a nuisance, not that he was to be pitied. She gave him stick and he gave stick right back and it was beautiful. The book does feature other characters – and I really liked Lou’s family, with the exception of her sister Treena, who I found to be quite a selfish girl. I didn’t care for Patrick, Lou’s boyfriend, either. But, really, it’s Lou and Will and their interactions that make this book so flipping readable.

Jojo Moyes is a wonderful storyteller. Truly gifted, and she has many books to her name, and it’s going to be a joy for me to discover all of her other, fantastic I’m sure, novels. The one thing I knew for absolute certain when I started this book was that it was going to break my heart. Because it broke everybody else’s and that one little spoiler assured me of what I suspected all along. I knew the ending, I knew how it was all going to go down and that thought depressed me on and off throughout the novel; why continue to read a book when I know I am not going to get my happy ever after I always love to get? But, some books are worth the pain and the heartache and this is one of them, especially when it’s done so beautifully. It made me cry. Not as bad as some books have this year, but it made me cry nevertheless. I did feel heartbroken inside. On the other hand, if I found myself in a similar situation to Will, I’d be on his side every day of the week, so I could also understand it. This was an amazing novel, that blew me away in every which way. I adored it, I devoured it, and it made me laugh and broke my heart all at the same time, something a good book should always do and I can see why Me Before You has over 3,000 reviews on Amazon, because it’s THAT good and it really does get you talking.