Author: JoJo Moyes
Pages: 369
Publisher: Pamela Dorman Books/Viking
Goodreads rating: 4.31 Stars
Published: December 31, 2012
Source: Audiobook/Library
Description:
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.
My Thoughts
Contemporary fiction usually isn't my "thing". That being said, I really enjoyed the quirkiness and wit in Me Before You. I'd been told a few things about this book before reading it, mostly that it will make me just cry my eyes out and/or that it’s amazing and brilliant and that I have to read it. Having two little ones running around and needing constructive direction doesn't leave a whole lot of reading time, so audiobooks have become my saving grace in how I get things "read". {I think at some point I'll write up a nice big post about that and everything it entails at some other point.} I'd borrowed this from my local public library, only waiting a few weeks for my hold to come in {amazing, since the movie was very publicized and on its way to the theater}.
The story follows a very perky, slightly eccentric young woman while she works through family situations and tries to figure out who she is, after landing a job as a caregiver {so long as she doesn’t have to wipe bums, she’s okay with it}. Hearing her on the audiobook, she sounds like sunshine personified most the time, but not in a way that makes you cringe. She is very relatable, even if you happen to live on another continent living an entirely different type of life. Listening while I ran my errands or while my kids napped I was completely transported to wherever Lou was, watching what she was doing or listening to what she was saying.
Will Traynor... guys, he's going to kind of hit you in the gut. He does just about anything to get Lou to just ignore him/go away. He made a deal with his parents, and he just wants to have it finally reach its end. He has six months left of his deal when Lou comes on as his caregiver, and he is determined not to let anything or anyone get in the way of his goal or derail his plan for the end of his six months. But Louisa Clark is a force to be reckoned with, and has soon wormed her way into Will's life and eventually his heart.
Ultimately this book did bring me to tears in the end. The general ending was kind of what I expected {since everyone told me it would make me cry ugly tears}, but I won't go into details so that I don't spoil it for any of you! It was worth every minute I spent listening to the book, and JoJo Moyes has such a way with characters that you will be both thanking her and cursing her for the beauty that is Louisa Clark and Will Traynor and the relationship she weaves between them.
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