Me before You by Jojo Moyes

Val Penny ♦ January 15, 2019 ♦ 1 Comment

I had never read any books by Jojo Moyes, until Me before You became our book of the month for our book group.

Me Before You tells the story of a successful young attorney, Will Traynor, who is seriously injured in an accident as a result of which he becomes wheel chair bound and quadriplegic.

He has become very bitter and rude. He never goes out and has attempted suicide. His parents are at their wits’ end. So they enploy a new carer, Louisa Clark, whom they hope will cheer him up, although she has no experience of caring.

Louisa has just lost her job at a local cafe. She had worked there for years: but the owner decided to close the cafe and move abroad. Louisa has been with her boyfriend Patrick for years too. She has not experienced much at all outside her home town.

Louisa has quite a different attitude to life from Will and bursts into his world in a riot of colour. Their conflicting attitudes change each other permanently.

I had not really expected to enjoy this book: but I did. Although the ending was very predictable, the route it took to get there transfixed me. Me Before You was a terrific book group read.

The Author

Jojo Moyes is a British novelist. She studied at Royal Holloway, University of London. She won a bursary financed by The Independent newspaper to study journalism at City University and subsequently worked for The Independent for 10 years. In 2001 she became a full time novelist. 

Moyes’ novel Foreign Fruit won the Romantic Novelists’ Association (RNA) Romantic Novel of the Year in 2004. She is married to journalist Charles Arthur and has three children.

Val Penny