Me Before You: Review

...he was pleased to see me in a way he wasn't actually going to be able to say. And I told myself that it was going to have to be enough. I would do the thing he had asked for. That would have to be enough. 

Louisa  "Lou" Clark is an ordinary woman living the most ordinary of lives--still living at home with her parents, working as a waitress in the local cafe, riding the same bus and walking the same way home every evening. The most extraordinary thing about Lou is her eccentric taste in clothing. She bursts on every scene looking like a rainbow that had a fight in an Oxfam shop. But her life is about to become very extraordinary indeed....and all because she loses her job.

Will Traynor has always been a man of action--whether scaling rocky heights and climbing Mount Kilimanjaro or taking on the big deals of the corporate world, he's known what he wants and how to get it. Preferably as quickly and in the most exciting way possible. All that changes on a rainy afternoon when he collides with a motorcycle as he sprints for a taxi. Up till now, he's tackled every challenge that's come his way, but the challenge of living the rest of his life in a wheelchair--not even able to feed himself without assistance--isn't the kind of challenge he had in mind and he decides it isn't the kind of challenge he wants.

When the cafe where Lou works closes down, she is forced to look for another job and, after trying various options that just didn't work out, she applies for position that will offer "care and companionship for a disabled man." That ad doesn't even begin to explain the situation when she meets Will Traynor. Will is bitter and tired of life. He doesn't want help, he doesn't want cheery, and, as far as Lou can tell, he doesn't want her. But little by little these two very different people begin to get to know each other...and the six months they spend together will change them forever.


So...I made the mistake of finishing this book at work. Teary-eyed and sniffing at my desk. Jo Jo Moyes has written a heart-breakingly beautiful book. An out-of-the-ordinary love story. The characters are quirky and imperfect and utterly believable. The story is difficult--the decisions Will makes are devastating for all who care for him--and the struggles they all go through to determine how best to prove that they love him are real and painful the hardest battle anyone should have to face emotionally.  I loved watching the relationship grow between Will and Lou. I loved watching Lou learn how to live and to reach for what she wants most in life. I cried with her as she had to let some of those things go. 

At the end of the novel, Will asks Lou to support him the most difficult decision anyone can make. At first she can't face it--and then, in a revisiting of a scene from earlier in the book, Will says:

“Hey Clark. Tell me something good." I stared out of the window at the bright-blue Swiss sky and I told him a story of two people. Two people who shouldn't have met, and who didn't like each other much when they did, but who found they were the only two people in the world who could possibly have understood each other...And as I spoke I knew these would be the most important words I would ever say and that it was important that they were the right words, that they were not propaganda, an attempt to change his mind, but respectful of what Will had said.

And, at its heart, that is what Me Before You is about--two people who had every reason NOT to like one another, every reason NOT to get along who become the only people who can understand and help each other when they need it most. Will as he faces the most difficult moment of his life and Lou as she faces a crucial crossroads. Their care and understanding of each other is what makes this book work. Fantastic story-telling.  ★★★★ and a 1/2 stars.