Me Before You - A Review By Laura

What is it about?

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.

Who is it for?

Young Adults and older

Genre?

Chick Lit/Contemporary/Fiction

 

Is it any good?

I first became aware of this book whilst in work, everyone was asking me for 'me before you' or 'after you' and it took me a while to actually wonder why it was so popular, I was a bit slow on the uptake of this books existence, so when the book finally appeared in work I just had to see what the fuss was about and from reading the blurb alone I knew I had to jump on the bandwagon.

I bought this book when it was the half price deal of the week and literally flying off the shelves, however for some stupid reason I decided to leave it sitting on my shelf for months because I wanted to read it on holiday, which I did. In the space between me buying it and my holiday the movie adaption came out and I began hearing a lot about the controversy of this book and before long I knew what happened and I thought it had been spoiled for me, I say thought because I was wrong, there is so much going on in this book that it would be impossible for the whole story to be ruined for you. With past reads I have found that some authors focus on one issue alone making the read a bit tedious however there is so much going on with other characters in this book that is actually makes it a little bit more realistic... When bad things happen life doesn't stop for anyone and Jojo Moyes conveyed that in this read and in certain aspects building a foundation for the sequel.

I loved the first person point of view throughout this book, mostly focusing on Lou but at certain stages throughout the book we where given the point of view of one of the other characters, breaking the book up nicely for small intervals, I would have liked to get a glimpse of Wills point of view but at least we got his letter at the end so I will say no more on that matter. The dialogue between characters was written so well that whilst I was reading it I could actually see the conversation unfolding. 

I laughed while reading this book and I definitely cried whilst reading this book it had me gripped from the get go right till the last page and I am both looking forward to and dreading the movie adaptation, I don't think my heart can take it. 

I don't really want to go into much more detail in case some how this book has not yet been spoiled for you.
 

Was the ending satisfactory?

The ending had me so gripped, I felt as though I couldn't read fast enough and I think I wanted Will to change his mind just as much as Lou did. However I am glad that there was a sequel so that we got to see how everyone was coping.

 

Would I recommend the book?

Without a doubt!

 

Read it if you like:

A fault in our stars, Now is good