Me Before You

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes
(Penguin, 2012)
Format: hardback via library - and thanks to my sister-in-law and niece for the recommendation!

From 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."

Oh, joy. Joy and sadness. Louisa and Will are both stuck, in vastly different ways (a past trauma isn't comparable to suddenly facing life as a quadriplegic, obviously), and when Lou finds herself working as a companion to Will they are drawn together in unexpected ways. They initially dislike each other, but the longer Lou spends with Will, the more her unique attitude breaks through his walls. Although they will spend much of their time at cross-purposes, the way they come to care for each other and push each other is a deeply affecting tale of the value of looking beyond yourself. Moyes's dialogue is consistently witty and her characters so fully inhabit their locations that the scenes are vivid. Her style is easy and clear and, while I wish I'd gotten just a little more force behind the 'whys' of Lou's juxtaposition of quirky, forthright gal in public with an excessively banked inner fire, I was very much with this story to the bittersweet end. Well worth the read.