Me Before You by Jojo Moyes
Published by Penguin on January 2, 2012
Genres: Contemporary, Romance, Domestic life, Family life
Pages: 385
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Louisa Clark is an ordinary girl living an exceedingly ordinary life—steady boyfriend, close family—who has barely been farther afield than their tiny village. She takes a badly needed job working for ex–Master of the Universe Will Traynor, who is wheelchair bound after an accident. Will has always lived a huge life—big deals, extreme sports, worldwide travel—and now he’s pretty sure he cannot live the way he is.

Will is acerbic, moody, bossy—but Lou refuses to treat him with kid gloves, and soon his happiness means more to her than she expected. When she learns that Will has shocking plans of his own, she sets out to show him that life is still worth living.

I’m just going to go ahead and admit that I watched the movie before I read the book. (And by the way, the movie adaptation is pretty darn good). But I’m so glad I did, because otherwise Me Before You is not the type of book I would have probably picked up, no matter how many other bloggers I saw raving about it.

Me Before You was a beautiful book, full of hope and love and heartbreak in the most surprising and heart wrenching ways. Louisa (or Lou) is trapped in her small town and she doesn’t know it, until Will Traynor begins to show her what it is like to want something for the first time.

The characters and relationships in Me Before You are sincere and raw, and their struggles made me cry *ahem* more than once (to say the least).
The story is truly heart shattering and yet it is also one of the most uplifting books I’ve ever read. There’s this hope throughout the story, and it’s moving in a way I didn’t know I could be moved.

I would recommend this book to everyone, cause this is not the kind of story you want to miss. And if you really don’t want to take the plunge, at least watch the movie, cause it’s pretty much a watered down version (as in it leaves out about half of the plot) but it still gets the same message across.

I am going to give Me Before You five out of five hearts.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥