Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

You know, when it rains it pours.  I have been battling with that ridiculous cold that is going around and it is making it difficult for me to sleep at night.  The only upside of insomnia is surplus time to read.  Unfortunately, every book I picked up was uninspiring.  Finally I took myself, sick and gross, to the library and packed my bag full of books.  Full.  I figured at least one of them should hold my attention.

In Me Before You I found a treasure.  I have seen this book on bookstore shelves and picked it up because it looked familiar and I was getting tired.  I sat down to read it last night and finished it this afternoon.

In this book Louisa Clark is living a simple life in her tiny village in England when she takes a new job as a caregiver to Will Traynor.  Will has led a big and adventurous life but after an accident is struggling to acclimate to life as a person with quadrapalegia.  Both Louisa and Will grew up in the same small town but with vastly different backgrounds and life goals their perspective on life and living are equally disparate.  Louisa does not make any plans for her future and is content to dress uniquely and live an unchallenged life.  Will has always looked for adventure and success and now he has a new plan, one that shocks his family and Louisa.  This book is labelled as a romantic story and it is in the very truest sense because it is the story of how loving someone means allowing them to choose their happiness.

This book says right in the dust jacket that it is heartbreakingly romantic.  If I had bothered to read the jacket before starting the book I probably would not have read the book.  I do not like heartbreak.  Well, more specifically, I do not like to cry.  Sometimes, books are “heartbreaking” because the stupid characters make poor choices or have wretched conversation skills and that results in heartache (ahem, again, Nicholas Sparks).   These books are contrived to make you feel something that always rings as slightly artificial to me.  More rarely, books take us on a journey with a character that reflects the heartbreaking growth that is a part of life.  These stories forever connect you with the characters and their experiences.  Me Before You is firmly in the second category and I enjoyed it tremendously even though it made me teary.