Me Before You

Captivating book. Lovely book. Easy to read but not poorly written, with a thought-provoking plot-line. However, I've never been one for sad love stories and this is certainly a sad love story. Unfortunately it was not deeply profound enough to bring me to tears or to truly take me out of my world - but that being said, it was a cinnamon-sweet, enjoyable read.

4/5 stars “I will never, ever regret the things I've done. Because most days, all you have are places in your memory that you can go to.”

I tried my hardest to read this spoiler-free and before the movie came out, but things happened that kinda ruined all that. As the movie was being promoted, I got spoiled for the end. Then I lost the book and ended up watching the movie before the book was found.

If everything had gone according to plan, perhaps I would rated this book an easy 5 stars. But instead, while I loved the writing and the characters, I didn't get to emotionally attached. My feelings weren't wrecked. I finished the book and was able to move on with my life. It's hard to give a book that was suppose to leave me destroyed a 5 stars when it couldn't even perform its one job.

That being said, I did enjoy this book. I loved the characters, the subplots nonexistent in the movie, and the beautiful writing. I understand why this book is so well-loved. Especially to those people who had the opportunity to go into it completely bling. Oh well.

Me Before You has appeared on almost every “Top Books...” list I've seen. It wasn't until I saw the trailer for the upcoming movie that I decided to give it a chance.

For anyone unfamiliar with the story.... Me Before You is about a woman named Louisa Clark who is hired to assist a quadriplegic man, Will Trayner. He is determined to end his life. She is determined to stop him.

I finished this book about and hour ago and I'm struggling with how to write this review. Was it a great book? No. Was it a terrible book? No. It was just ok.

This book featured a heart-wrenching plotline that was used to sell millions of books. Yes. I said it. This book was written to make the bestseller list. Is used the formulaic plotline of a thriller novel. It reveals pieces as it deems them necessary to the story. It jumps forwards and backwards in time. Occasionally it jumps between characters. All of this leads to the climactic ending. Who will win? Louisa or Will?

I didn't hate the characters. I really like Will, Lou (and her bumblebees), and Nathan. The rest of the characters were forgettable. In fact, it took me almost 100 pages to register who Thomas and Patrick were.

My real problem was with the writing. A chapter would start (in a boring, almost lecture-like tone), followed by buildup into a climactic reveal or moment. I'd be eager to find out what happens, flip to the next chapter, then bam... complete change of scenery or topic. It was frustrating. Incredibly frustrating.

By the 3/4 mark I was ready for this book to end. I had read 75% of the book and little had happened. It felt like a poorly chopped film by a college student. I'm hopeful the movie will be better.

Overall, the book was decent. It had some good moments. It tried to play on a reader's emotions, but much of the book fell flat. Honestly, it feels forgettable.

Me Before You is an incredible, heart-wrenching love story between a quadriplegic and his caretaker. Louisa makes it her mission to show Will that he can still live a fulfilling life in spite of his circumstances and somewhere along the way, Will ends up changing Louisa as well. Their story is beautiful and I didn't want it to end. It's also a reminder to live life to the fullest because you never know when there might come a day when you won't be able to. Highly, highly recommended but be warned that Will Traynor will crush your heart.

I have mixed feelings about this book. I can most certainly see the mass appeal the story has - the budding romance between Lou and Will really had my hopes up that Will would change his mind, and it was exciting to see them both changing as a result of their unexpected but growing relationship. However, I really had difficulty wrapping my head around the ending and found myself thinking a LOT after finishing this book. (After I got over the whole crying-because-of-the-ending thing.) So many questions. What if he had chosen to live? Why couldn't the author have allowed someone to have found a cure? Why couldn't Lou's love for
Will been enough?

I suppose I can appreciate that the ending wasn't the typical-romance-story-puppies-and-rainbows type deal, but I don't know what I think about assisted suicide. I am pro-life when it comes to unborn children and supporting adoption and foster care especially for women who have opted for that route rather than abortion, but am I pro-life when it comes to assisted suicide? I don't know.

This story presented an exploration of someone's journey through a disability that made this a bit more of a grey area for me. I do not know what it is like to struggle with a disability involving paralysis from the waist down, constant pain, inability to use my arms, and no longer even being able to use the bathroom on my own. This is what has come to define Will's life in the book, and in such a debilitating way that he has attempted to take his life prior to the main character Lou entering the picture. What is that truly like? I don't know and can only begin to imagine.

I am grateful for the opportunity to be challenged in what I believe but find it difficult to read a story like this and not come back to my faith as a landing pad after navigating through the thoughts and questions this book brought to mind. What do I wish? (Call it naive and simplistic if you would like, but this is what comes to mind for me and is how I am reacting to this book.) That Will knew he had value and worth as a human being created in the image of God even before his accident or perhaps even as a result of it. That someone entered his life and explained the gospel and how we are called to view suffering in light of the gospel (e.g., James 1:2-4) and having a changed heart (e.g., Ezekiel 36:26-27). That what happens in life does not always make sense, but nothing is too terrible or too big for God to redeem and restore, whether we can see and understand this on this side of heaven or not.

I probably thought way too much about this book. It's just a book, after all. A fictional story about fictional characters. I also recognize real life is messy, and there aren't always the picture perfect happy endings we expect and perhaps feel entitled to at the end of the story, fictional or not. Maybe I'm just one of those people who is unable to compartmentalize enough to enjoy fiction for what it is and leave it at that and should not be writing reviews of books like this - especially late at night when I'm tired - which I am just fine with, if that is the case.

i loved this book so much. i started reading it somewhere before my exams so i didn't have time to read further in it, but now i finished it in 4 days because it's just this good! i really didn't expect how the end would turn out, but i really liked the book as it all made perfect sense.

william traynor deserved better.

Not my cup of tea (haha get it? Because SO MUCH TEA DRINKING THIS THIS NOVEL).

It was slow, there were a lot of characters and a lot of sub-plots that took away from the story and ultimately I was not invested in the two characters very much, or in the main character for that matter. I never really quite “got” her.

Ultimately, this wasn't a romance novel but more of a modern “coming of age” novel. However, for me, it never quite reached that wow factor that some well written “coming of age” novels accomplish.

I really wanted to love this book, but there was something for me that was lacking in it. The potential was there, but I did not connect with the characters enough and the story felt rushed and underdeveloped at points. It is still a good (and sad) story, but for me I needed some more description and character development.

What a fucking horrible book.
I'm really surprised to see everybody gushing over this piece of five-hundredth-rate crap.
This was presented to my mother as a thank-you by a friend of hers, I picked it up because it read on the sleeve that Sophie Kinsella loved it, so of course I wanted to hurt my brain really bad and see for myself what kind of ‘literature' world-renown crapseller Kinsella ‘hearted'.
This is it and of this at least I'm not surprised.

Here the reasons for hating it:
- psychological depth of characters equals zero
- decision-making of said characters is preposterous
- male lead expresses respect for female lead's intellectual curiosity, which mistifies readers: said curiosity should be described by the fact that she goes on the internet a couple of times and signs up for a community site. Oh Lordie!
- a conspicuous part of the plot claims to revolve around a ethical nevralgic point, which is never discussed in depht

it seems to me this is enough. But there's more. A lot more.
What a coarse, incredibly dim-witted, horrible thing.

It was tricky to determine how I felt about this book. I did enjoy reading it, but underneath I had an unsettling feeling. I'm admittedly biased as a consequence of having been in an unhealthy relationship where suicide was threatened as a means of control. So, the thought of a significantly younger woman having to attempt to prevent a man's suicide and then falling in love with him in the process? I had trouble ignoring the alarm bells going off in my mind. That being said, I realize the story was not a manipulative scenario and the more romantic side of me could understand some aspects and go along with it.

My heart was not prepared for these kind of feelings... sigh

most my friends know I like Will have a lot of health problems that being said i fell in love with this book, i cried (yes the ugly kind) I have no shame!

‘The thing about being catapulted into a whole new life - or at least shoved up so hard against someone else's life that you might as well have your face pressed against their window - is that it forces you to rethink your idea of who you are. Or how you might seem to other people.'

Louisa's life is lackluster and she's completely content with ‘playing it safe' at life. Not that she's ever allowed herself to contemplate how different things could possibly be. She goes to her job at the tea shop, she goes home to her windowless room at her parents house, and she occasionally spends time with her boyfriend Patrick who is far more concerned with his exercise regiment than he is with her. But when she loses her job at the tea shop she accepts a temporary 6 month position as a caregiver to a quadriplegic, Will Traynor.

Louisa and Will are complete opposites and the first few weeks of them knowing each other the quite truly hated each other. Will was oftentimes irrationally difficult and Louisa was ready to quit, but she stuck it out and slowly they developed an extremely touching friendship.

All I can say is that you make me...you make me into someone I couldn't even imagine. You make me happy, even when you're awful.I would rather be with you- even the you that you seem to think is diminished- than with anyone else in the world.'

Their blossoming romance was one of the most convincing I've read in a long time and was truly uplifting. They changed each other in massive ways in such a short period of time. Louisa gave Will happiness that he hadn't experienced for a very long time and Will gave Louisa the determination to do something with her life and not let it go to waste.

Calling this book chick-lit isn't doing this book any sort of justice; the subject matter is simply far too thought-provoking for that kind of label. The real meat of the story focuses on Will's decision to end his life by assisted suicide, which is the reason behind Louisa's ‘temporary' position as he promised his parents he would give them another 6 months but no more. Convinced that he just needs something to live for, his parents hire Louisa who is bright, fun and talkative in hopes that she can convince him that he still has something to live for.

“You only get one life. It's actually your duty to live it as fully as possible.”

It was certainly a tough subject matter to read but was so well written and managed to actually make me laugh out loud at several parts. I loved Louisa and Will's wittiness and constant banter, it was the perfect addition to this poignant story. It was hard not to picture what it would be like if you were put into a situation such as Louisa and Will's. What you would do, if you would actually do anything different. All I know is that they both had an incredibly difficult decision to make and either way was bound to lead to heartache.

This was an incredible story that was so painful (in that crazy heart hurting kind of way) to read but I simply could not put it down. Me Before You is a heartbreaking story about finding what makes life worth living and making the decision whether it's truly enough. Definitely a new favorite and one that my heart won't be forgetting.