Review: Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

Title: Me Before You
Author: Jojo Moyes
Pages: 482
Release Date: 5th January 2012
Publisher: Penguin
Source: Amazon Vine

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.

How could I not like a book when the main character is called Lou Clarke, I'm sure Jojo Moyes wasn't thinking about me when she wrote this but I am still quite thrilled with the fact that the main character in this shares my name.If having the main character named after me isn’t enough to convince you to read the book, then carry on reading this review – it’s going to be gushing so I’m sure I’ll be able to convince you!

I bought this book because I’d loved the last book that Jojo Moyes wrote (Last Letter From Your Lover), I looked at the blurb but it didn’t really tell me much, I now know that the blurb on the back of this book really doesn’t do it justice, in fact the first line describing Lou makes her sound rather OCD – which she’s really not. Not only does it not give an accurate picture of Lou but it also doesn’t really tell us what the book is about. Now this is where things get a bit complicated. I think the fact that I had no idea what to expect made the book a lot better for me, certain things that happened were a complete surprise to me and not at all what I expected which really added to my reading experience. For those people who haven’t read any other reviews of this book I would honestly say, don’t read the rest of my review just know that this is an absolutely wonderful book which will make you laugh and make you cry. You’ll think about it long after you’ve finished it and you’ll want to lend it to your family and friends.

For those of you that have read other reviews, you will have heard what the book is about and so won’t find any of the following a spoiler.

This book tackles the very serious subject of the right to die and assisted suicide. Will Traynor used to live a very active life, then he was involved in a road accident and is now paralysed, spending his life in a wheelchair unable to do anything for himself. Lou Clarke is employed as his carer, she’s not there to do anything medical but to try and get him to see that his life is still worth living. The relationship between Will and Lou is brilliantly portrayed, it’s not an easy relationship but it is tackled with wit – the scene where they first meet had me in stitches!

Going back to the subject of assisted suicide this is a book that could have been seriously depressing but Jojo Moyes manages to avoid this and injects just the right amount of humour throughout. In all honesty, you know how the book is going to end – or at least you have a good idea, if you’re anything like me then you’ll spend the second half of the book desperately hoping for a different ending while knowing that anything else other than how it’s been written would have been a cop out. To an extent it reminds me of a Jodi Picoult book (but with more humour), you know that at the end you’re going to need to have a box of tissues ready. I actually saved the end until my husband was out as I knew how bad I was going to be – and I hadn’t underestimated how much I would blub.

Although I’ve not read a lot of books this year this one is my favourite so far and I think it’s going to take a lot to beat it.

I mentioned above that this is a book you will want to lend to your family and friends, as soon as I put this down I got in touch with my mum to say I had a book she’d love. Three days later she got back in touch to say she’d stayed up all night to finish it and had very sore eyes from the amount of crying she’d done. I now have a queue of people waiting for this book as we’ve both been so vocal in telling everyone how much we love it. The big test will be my cousin, who’s taking it on holiday with her, she doesn’t cry at anything – I’ll let you know if tears were spotted when she finished this!

About the Author 
Jojo Moyes (born 1969) is a British novelist. Moyes studied at Royal Holloway, University of London. She won a bursary financed by The Independent newspaper to study journalism at City University and subsequently worked for The Independent for 10 years. In 2001 she became a full time novelist. Moyes' novel Foreign Fruit won the Romantic Novelists' Association (RNA) Romantic Novel of the Year in 2004. She is married to journalist Charles Arthur and has three children.

You can find out more about Jojo Moyes at her website www.jojomoyes.com

Follow on Twitter @jojomoyes