Me Before You – A Review

Heloooo everyone. This place has been quiet, too quiet too long. I’ve been away and I’ve been reading. Remember I told you I was gifted a kindle? Let me just say that I’ve been putting it to very very good use.

I have a bunch of books to review and I begin today with my personal favourite:

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

Me before You is the story of Louisa Clark and Will Traynor.

The story

Lou Clark is an ‘ordinary girl leading an ordinary life’ with the only distinction of having a weird dress sense and of putting her crazily clad foot right into her mouth. She has worked most of her adult life at the tiny Buttered Bun Cafe buttering bread and serving tea but she isn’t bored or tired. She loves being there. She finds her ordinary life comfortable and happy. But then the cafe closes down and she is hired by the very wealthy Camilla Traynor to take care of her quadriplegic son.

She’s definitely not looking forward to the ‘bum wiping’.

As it turns out bum wiping might have been the easy bit. Will Traynor was an active, successful businessman till a road accident confines him to a wheelchair. Now, he is unkempt, angry and very daunting.

What follows is a story of these two people.

The Review

Everything about this book is a cliche. The rich-boy-poor-girl story, a dysfunctional family, the crabby quadriplegic, the cheerful carer and a romance… well almost.

But my God the way it is told – that’s where the magic lies – in the telling. And the telling is flawless. I fell in love with the snarky Will and the quirky Loiusa. I felt his helplessness, his desperation, her hope and her loss.

It’s funny and sweet and heartbreaking. It might make you cry but not in the way of run-of-the-mill weepies. You know those ones, don’t you? The ones that are written with the specific intent of making the reader cry? A bit like Nicholas Sparks. This is nowhere like that.

Unlike what the cover might lead you to believe it is not all about romance, which is  incidental rather than central. The story is more about  finding oneself, stepping out of one’s comfort zone and making the most of one’s life. It is about evaluating and examining choices, of doing with your life, what you want. I might not agree with all of it but I loved it, all of it.

The film is due to be out soon and I do hope they don’t spoil it. This one is a tale beautifully told. Read it I say. Read it if you have a bit of a romantic in you.