I have a to be read list as long as my arm, so trust that book reviews will form a solid part in my blogging experience for the foreseeable. I have done a few reviews in the past over on my YouTube channel but I think I’m going to swap them over to here to give them their own dedicated write up, I hope that’s okay! SPOILER ALERT – I will be going into the story line and characters in this post, so if you don’t want to know what happens, you have been warned!
So the first book I want to talk about is the one I’ve finished this week, Me before you by Jojo Moyes. I’ve heard such incredible things about lots of book by this author, and judging by the blurb alone, I knew this was going to a be a weeper and I was right.
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.
Overview:
Rating: ♥♥♥♥♥ 5/5
Who would I recommend this too: Any female!
Favourite Quote: “You only get one life. It’s actually your duty to live it as fully as possible.”
Quick (No spoiler) overview: I would recommend this for a romantic beach or poolside read. Very easy to fall in love and sympathise with the characters. Written beautifully, as well as showing a background perspective into the story lines from secondary characters such as the parents and medical carer of Will. Romantic, heart braking and inspiring, had me in tears but completely unable to put it down. Although I predicted the conclusion half way through, and I will admit it was entirely predictable, the way it was written had me eager to complete it and see the story through. I consider myself a cynical romantic, I don’t tend to believe characters or really get into typical soppy lovey dovey books, but this one had me hook line and sinker.
Full Review:
The story starts with Louisa losing her job at a café in a quiet tourist town. She goes to the job centre and, after not wanting to work night shifts in a chicken processing factory, becomes the unlikely candidate for a job caring for a man named Will, who is paralysed from the neck down after a motorcycle accident. With no qualifications or previous experience, Louisa isn’t expecting to get the job but proves to be the perfect woman for the job with her uplifting and caring personality.
When her and Will meet he is understandably downbeat, being trapped in a body that doesn’t serve his previously exhilarating lifestyle, he takes his anger out on Louisa. Being rude and short with her, and just generally not being a great person to be around, causes Louisa to want to quit after just a few days. She promises to stay for the length of her contract, just six months, to help contribute towards her family home when her father is on the brink of losing his job.
Over the course of the first few months of Louisa seeing Will every day, the pair become closer and Will opens up about his past, and encourages Louisa to do more with her life. She has never been anywhere further than a bus ride from the town she has grown up in, where as Will, pre accident, travelled the world, and emerged himself in activities she couldn’t even imagine.
After his ex girlfriend comes to visit him, to inform him of her upcoming wedding to his ex best friend, Louisa finds out that Will intends to go to Dignitas to end his life in just a few short months, hence why Louisa was only employed for six months. She doesn’t tell Will she knows of his intentions, she just makes it her mission to change his mind. Louisa plans days out and activities, which largely don’t go to plan. One such excursion ending in Will being lifted in his wheelchair by a group of drunk soldiers when his chair gets stuck in mud at a horse racing ground.
She plans to take him to Paris to sit in cafes and drink coffee and eat pastries and watch the world go by, but he refuses to go. He previously went to Paris and speaks lovingly about his time there, but Will says he loves his memories as it was his previous life, and he doesn’t want to remember such a formerly happy place with the current limitations he faces in his wheelchair. Paris becomes a recurring theme at the end of the book, so the way its written about throughout paints such a beautiful picture.
Louisa spends her spare time shared between following her boyfriend Patrick around a racing track as he trains for some crazy Viking marathon, and in the library researching what holidays she can take a depressed quadriplegic on to make him want to live. She plans an elaborate holiday, and much to her surprise, Will agrees to go. In contrast, Patrick is upset at how much Louisa cares about making her boss want to live. They swiftly end their relationship, and Louisa focuses her attention on executing the perfect holiday for Will.
Everything was planned, then Will gets sick. He ends up in hospital, just weeks before he’s due to go to Dignitas. Running out of time, Louisa cancels the action packed holiday and returns to the computer and the forums in which she has found likeminded people around the world and he plans another trip. The Maldives. A relaxing trip where he can rest and recover after being released from hospital.
The trip goes to plan, and on the last night the inevitable happens. Will and Louisa end up drunk on a beach, and she tells him she’s fallen in love with him.
This happens just a week before Will is due to travel to Dignitas to end his life. Louisa has tried everything to change his mind, but even though she has given him all of herself, she is not enough to change his mind. They travel home from the Maldives, and Will asks her to go with him to Switzerland. She refuses, and spends days on end locked in her bedroom heart broken. After receiving a phone call from Wills mother, she changes her mind and makes the last minute decision to be with him in his last moments.
“How is it you have the right to destroy my life, I wanted to demand of him, but I’m not allowed a say in yours?”
They spend his last moments in each others arms, with Will instilling on Louisa that it she made him happier in the last six months than anyone else had in the rest of his life. He had to take what little control over his life that he could, and living in a body that couldn’t serve him to live the life he wanted was no life worth living.
The story ends with Louisa traveling to Paris, to live out Wills wish to sit in Le Marais and drink coffee and eat pastry. Here she opens a letter which he wrote her before he died, in which he tells her that he’s left a large sum of money to her, he asks her to buy herself a house somewhere other than the close minded small town that she’s always lived, and to spread her wings and pursue her dreams of studying fashion.
“You only get one life. It’s actually your duty to live it as fully as possible.”
I’m definitely going to pick up the follow on book from this one, in the back of this one is the first chapter of the next one ‘After You’ but I purposefully haven’t read that yet. I’m also yet to watch the film, I don’t want to ruin it because I enjoyed the book so much!
I’d love to know your favourite book, to add to my never ending list of books that I have to read!
Enjoy, Milli x
