Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

Ali Mark
Mar 13, 2016
6 min read

Story Line - 4

Writing Style - 3.5

Characters - 5

Excitement Factor - 4

Believability for type and topics - 5

Similarity to other books - 5

Cover art - 3

Title Relevance - 5

Goodreads users gave this book a 4.30. I think it was more deserving of a 4.38.

Published in 2012.

Pages: 369.

Number of books by author: 25 Works; 1 other in this series (After You).

Genre: General Fiction.

When Lou loses her job at the cafe, she comes across an offer that she almost can't refuse - watching over a man who happens to be a quadriplegic named Will. But when Will fights her attempts at playing nicey-nice, will their relationship bloom, or will his attempts at pushing her away be successful?

You may like this book if you like the following sub-genres:

Relationships
Coming of Age (adulthood)
Purpose of Life

So, this book has been popular for a while now, and everyone I know has cried at the end. I didn't. And I think it's because I have such a personal connection to this story line. Initially, I wouldn't have given this more than 4-stars. It wasn't all that it's cracked up to be (which I think maybe even influenced my gut instinct rating a bit).

The characters were really well done considering the sensitive nature of the story line. Will's character would be extremely hard to write if Moyes has never been involved in a situation as delicate as this one. Handicapped individuals, whether it's a minute handicapped, or an individual like, Will, who is paralyzed, struggle with a lot of the same things when they weren't born into their handicap. My dad was diagnosed with MS - and the things that Will experienced, the things he said - I've heard those words sputtered by my dad, I've heard the struggle. From the beginning, Will wasn't just Will for me. He was a younger (slightly worse off) version of my dad. And the entire time, I was like, "Yes, she nailed that emotion!" Or "Yes, she totally gets that knowing what life was like before can make life after that much more difficult." She completely nailed Will's character. And while my dad is still alive - if assisted suicide were as big of a deal here in the US, if it were something that he was doing, something that my mom and I would watch, I kind of feel like we would have been duplications of Lou and Mrs. Traynor. Mr. Traynor was an interesting character - there wasn't a lot of depth there, and so it's hard for me to see him as this incredibly important role. Which was a bit disappointing considering that we really were focused on the Traynor's and Lou's relationship. I also found Nathan's role to be slightly dismissive. I know a few in-home-nurses, and I felt kind of as if Nathan didn't really connect on any level other than being a pleasant nurse to help Will with a few things morning, noon, and night. In general, however, the characters really were spot in - and there was so much growth, in all of them. Even the secondary characters were able to change and mold into a new version of themselves.

The story line is something that I struggled with a bit. This plot line is so incredibly believable. And assisted suicide is becoming a topic we are hearing more about in politics (although, not as big as I had anticipated in this 2016 election). But, I think looking back and evaluating the characters - why is it that Nathan wasn't enough of a caregiver - someone to feed Will, help him with basic navigation, clean up the home - why wasn't Nathan the primary character instead of Lou? If it was about finances, that clearly wasn't an issue. Nathan had already been working for the Traynor's and with Will for 2 years - so why all of a sudden would they want to add a new member to their payroll. It's just something to consider - it seems a bit out of place when you really consider what in-home-nurses do. (This might be a location/culture thing... I know nurses here in the states are expected to do light cleaning depending on the company and so forth.)

This book wasn't overly exciting, but I found the topic to be extremely exciting. My dad is walker-dependent at all times (a cane can be substituted for extremely short distances) and in long-distances, we use a wheelchair. He often complains about people staring and feeling as though people look down on him. And that thought was in the back of my mind when Will was making comments about the same things (this could relate back to the character development, but for the sake of conversation, this is about the excitement in the book...

and this topic got me excited). The two things that I really took away from this work of fiction was the way in which society treats individuals with a handicap. The staring, the comments, the pointing. All these things were things that prevented Will from wanting to live his life. He truly didn't want to encounter strangers because he felt pittied. And I think it's amazing that we are welcoming this issue into print in a subtle, but educational way. Truthfully, how many people really thought about this when reading the book? Did you consider that people believe the handicapped can't have sex (which was mentioned, and I'm sure if we had read this story from Will's perspective, we might have had some additional details about if his mechanism still worked or not)? There's all these underlying tones that discuss handicapable individauls as people, rather than their disability - and that was the best part of this whole book - story line aside, I loved that this book identified a lot of struggles that Will faces as well as the struggles his friends and family and caregivers faced. It really brought a new light to what it means to be handicapped in our society and how we degrade rather than encourage these individuals to live in a new light.

The one area that bothered me was the writing style. I was quickly annoyed with the abrupt changes of subject - sometimes even moving ahead or back in time with a few dashes down the center of the page. I would've much rathered welcomed additional chapters - or if there wasn't enough to discuss in a chapter, I would've much rather preferred the author to use transition phrases such as, "This reminds of when....," or "Tuesday morning I went to work...." There was too many of this abrupt changes that completely take you out of a moment and force you into the next. I also had an issue with the chapters breaks at times. For me, a chapter indicates that a moment in time (whether that's one day, one hour, one meal, whatever) has ceased, or that we're changing a point of view or something that feels more definite in concluding a feeling or thought. Sometimes, the author would break a chapter and then the first sentence of the new chapter would've been something that easily could've been added in at the last chapter (and then we'd see those pesky dashes down the middle a few paragraphs later to indicate a new time). Now, point of view changing is okay (I stated above that it's a good time for a chapter break), but if you're going to alternate perspectives, I think you have to be consistent in doing so. Either do it, or don't do it. But I think I was about a third of the way, maybe even half way through the book, and only had one perspective change. But then towards the end, we changed perspectives - and to secondary characters who really didn't warrant an entire chapter from their perspective when it could've been added in via dialogue or in Lou asking her sister for her opinion. This scored low, and while it may not bother others, I'm very big on flow - and this book was so choppy sometimes that I had to reference back to the beginning of a new section to see who the hell I was even reading about.

The title was really well done - and I think, once you've read it, you'll see that it applies to multiple characters. All of Moyes' covers are the same, and I think it's kind of pathetic. I want art work on my covers, not curly letters that alternate in size, shape, and color. I only docked the cover art to a 3 since all of her books present that way, but if this had been the only one, it definitely would've gotten a 1.