Saturday, May 4, 2013

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

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

5 Stars
Jojo Moyes is now one of my favorite authors. Although the subject matter isn't conventional, it sure touches you where it counts! In Me Before You, Will is a quadriplegic, stuck in his chair and in pain for the last 2 years, after someone on a motorcycle ran him over. He is utterly miserable, a shell of the man he once was. His mother hires Louisa as a sort of caretaker/companion for Will, to try to cheer him up. The two form a friendship, and end up helping each other thru some heavy stuff. I sort of knew what I was getting into when I started this book, but I sure didn't expect to get the ugly cry going! There were a few parts in the book that had a profound effect on me, one being from Will's mothers POV. She mentions her son as a broken man, but that she didn't see him as just the man he had become, instead she saw his whole life when she looked at him. From the moment he entered the world, the toddler, then adolescent, teenager, and grown up, it was all of him she saw when looking at him. Before being a mom, I'm not sure I ever would've been as affected by that particular part, but boy did it hit home now. I haven't been this impacted by a book in awhile! It will probably remain one of my favorites, and will definitely stay with me.

~Mandy