Saturday, February 21, 2015

ME BEFORE YOU by JOJO MOYES - CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE - PENGUIN

By: Jojo Moyes
Published By: Penguin
Released: Available Now
Details: Paperback from library, 481 Pages

RATING: 5 EMOTIONALLY FEARLESS STARS

Blurb: Goodreads

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.


BOOK REVIEW by Michelle:

Flat out this book made me cry for fourteen pages straight.

This book is up to over 181,000 ratings on Goodreads. When I started reading, it was at 177,000 plus ratings.

That just goes to show the power of the writing in this book.

There is one quote that totally killed me in this book. 

“You still don’t get it, Clark, do you?’ I could hear the smile in his voice. “It’s not your choice.” 

I have always been of the mind that if you are living a life that has been so ruined by no fault of your own, so debilitating and you are of sound mind and judgement, then you do what you need to do.

No judgement coming from me.

Everybody would have an opinion on this and that is great, but that is my opinion.

What Jojo does so well in this book is she gives the reader time to adjust to Will and his life. How he lives every day. She got under my skin and although the ending was already made up in my mind once I knew some things, it didn’t make it any easier to read.

I CRIED FOR FOURTEEN PAGES!!!!

I cried for the exciting life that was taken from Will because of a motorcyclist. In the blink of an eye, a man who lived a very full life was reduced to no independence and constant illness. He had family who couldn’t feel what he could feel.

We are looking through Will’s eyes and it isn’t pretty. It isn’t happy.

Enter Clark. She is employed to bring something to his life. She comes from a middle class family who are struggling to put food on the table. Clark doesn’t really aspire to anything higher than working in a coffee shop, until that is taken away from her. She is the bread winner.

Will aspired to the moon and back.

To watch Will’s frustration with a woman who could be doing so much more with her life, considering he had lost so much, really makes you assess your own life.

FARRK!! This was a well told story. It makes me cry writing this review. My worst fear is losing my mind to dementia or Alzheimer’s. I never entertained the thought of being a quadriplegic.

Now I see things much differently. Like Clark I may not have the money to do what Will once could, but that is no excuse. We are all like Clark to a great extent, such limitations we put on our lives for various reasons...excuses.

Will is that fictional guy you read in books who is handsome, has loads of money because he worked hard to build himself a business at a young age. He has a beautiful woman. He LIVES every day. He travels in style. He is every woman’s dream man. 

But what happens when all that is taken away from him?

What happens when you are reduced to having a male nurse look after your every bodily function and you can’t move most of your body?

Speaking of Nathan the New Zealand nurse, so loved this guy!

What happens when your family are also falling apart around you?

What happens when they send in Lou Clark?

A friendship builds that is beautiful, heartbreaking and emotional to watch.


“Sometimes, Clark, you are pretty much the only thing that makes me want to get up in the morning.”


Jojo was very clever in how she wrote this. She doesn’t preach. She let’s Will tell the reader about a life as a quadriplegic.

She uses an online quadriplegic community site to tell us also. She shows us how Will gets through each day, and it isn’t fun. I personally had no idea how susceptible you are to infection and how just living each day, cared for by a nurse around the clock you can still die.

Life is farking hard.

Life is full of pain.

Life is miserable for Will.

Jojo also gave us the side of the quadriplegic that lived a happier life. The person who was in a relationship and didn’t let that life consume them.

This was Will’s story and his life, his desire.


Beautiful, heartbreaking and fearless.

It took me a week to write this review, I thought I could handle it without crying.

Nahhh. 

This book was simply too powerful.





Michelle

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