Sunday 5 February 2012

Books Read: JoJo Moyes - Me Before You

Source - Received as a birthday present

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 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 colour.  And neither of them knows they're going to change the other for all time.


I'd read rave reviews about this book and what a tearjerker it was and I have to confess I was rather cynical thinking no way that a book could have that effect on me....boy was I wrong!  

The book is about Lou and Will who in ordinary everyday life would never have met;  Lou, a home girl at heart has never left the town she's lived in her whole life and Will was a hotshot city-dealer who lived life to the full. 

Lou is devastated when the owner of the cafe she's worked in for 6 years tells her he is selling up and moving back to Australia.  She worries about how it will affect both her and her family as they need her rent to supplement the families finances. After several trips to the job centre she is finally offered a job as a carer which she's worried about accepting as she's never done that sort of work before.   

Will has been left feeling extremely frustrated after a devastating accident which has left him as a quadriplegic needing constant care and he no longer wants to live this way.  His parents, especially his mother Camilla, are desperate to show Will that there's plenty of things to live for and think quirky Lou could be the person to show him.    

At first Lou has no knowledge about Will's desire to end his life so she's extremely shocked to discover that his parents have agreed to help him in 6 months time if he still wants to go ahead with it.  She makes it her mission to prove to Will that life is worth living which is exactly what his parents had hoped for.  She starts to plan days out with mixed results for both of them... 

Along the way the two of them build a strong friendship but it's not only Lou showing Will what he would be missing, Will makes it his mission to get Lou to see more of the world after discovering that she's never left the country.  Can they both change each others lives for the good?

Reading the blurb on the back of the book, I could more or less tell that there was never really going to be a happy ever after ending but that did not stop me wanting there to be one for Will and Lou.   This was an extremely well-written, thought provoking book that actually made me think about what I would want if I was in that position. 

2 comments:

  1. I loved this book so much I was prompted to write my first review of a book ever. I was taken on a journey of laughter, tears and learning of what it must be like to have a disability. It was so insightful, I find it amazing that it was written by an able bodied person. Thank you so much for the hours of enjoyment.

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