Me Before You by Jojo Moyes Book Review

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

“I’m going to kick your stupid marathon-running shins so hard you’re going to think 157^th was actually a good result.”

This book isn’t the typical romance book I expected especially if you’ve seen the trailer for the film.

What I love about this book is how real it felt. Typically with books of this nature, they’re cheesy or full of it and this book was neither. The books typically have a message about how although life has obstacles you have to look on the bright side. Here’s the thing – that’s not the message of this book. Lou has that mind set and throughout the book tries to make Will see a life worth living by making him embrace life more and give him happiness but Will is determined to do what he wants to and at the end it’s the only decision he can truly make for himself. 

The book builds up their relationship slowly with all the little cute arguments and insults and then the eventual plans Lou makes leading to other things. I think both of them were adorable together and I loved the character growth.

There’s something about the way the story is written which makes it feel very intimate and I think its Lou’s character and how open she is. But there are breaks in the narrative where it’s the perspective of an additional character and that was interesting to read.

The story also focuses on the family of the two characters and how they both had issues. It was real though like the sister relationship and how honest and rightfully selfish the characters were.

Although the story is about the relationship and characters and there is an underlining sadness to most things, the book is scattered with humour. Take the quote from above which is by Lou’s sister and in context it hilarious and I still laugh about it for some reason. But there’s the cute sarcastic humour with the two main characters.

The characters in the book aren’t all good people and the good characters weren’t always nice which I liked because it presented not only a realistic feel but added to the complex nature of certain things in the book.

Plus the film looks so cute but I hope they don’t make it too romance focused because the romance in the book was very slowly built.

   ★★★★☆