Me Before You by Jojo Moyes {Book Review}

I’ve decided to join the Book Club Friday blog hop and finally get around to reviewing Me Before You by Jojo Moyes, which is one of my favorite reads this year. Thanks to Kate of Another Clean Slate for recommending it!

Synopsis

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?

{Source: Amazon}

Verdict

I started the book knowing that it would be a sad story, but what I didn’t expect was that it would mostly make me laugh, and smile. Smile a lot.

It was written in such a witty, refreshing voice, and as the story unfolded through the eyes of Lou Clark, it was like being her, so I got to know Will Traynor the same way she did, and went through the same journey that she went on, including falling for him, even though he is a quadriplegic who hated his life and was sarcastic beyond belief (and is just a character in a book whom I had never even met in real life, for Pete’s sake).

I love stories like these. It reminded me of A Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks, when you find yourself unexpectedly falling for a character who seems impossible to fall in love with at first.

Just like in A Walk to Remember, this book has its weepy points, too, but it will leave you with a generally nice feeling overall, and you’ll be happy you picked it up.

Favorite Quotes

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.

I just want to be a man who has been to a concert with a girl in a red dress. Just for a few minutes more.

All I can say is that you make me… you make me into someone I couldn’t even imagine. You make me happy, even when you’re awful. I would rather be with you – even the you that you seem to think is diminished – than with anyone else in the world.

I thought, briefly, that I would never feel as intensely connected to the world, to another human being, as I did at that moment.

I will never, ever regret the things I’ve done. Because most days, if you’re stuck in one of these, all you have are the places in your memory that you can go to.