REVIEW — Me Before You

I don’t think there is a single person in the entire world who doesn’t have an opinion regarding Me Before you by JoJo Moyes. My opinion took nearly three months to put into words, and it wasn’t because I hated the book. Truth be told, I absolutely loved Me Before you. I read it in a week, then went through a complete book hangover trying to find something equally gripping. I have yet to find it.

Me Before You is about an adorable girl named Louisa (Lou) Clark who I absolutely fell in love with. She’s quirky, uplifting, positive in a way I could never be considering her situation, and I’m not referring to our hero.

If you’re read the book (or even only seen the movie, which I haven’t),  but you’ll have met her family. Lou has a mom, a dad, a sister, a nephew, and a boyfriend, and I freaking hated every single one of them. They were the worst sort of people. The sister … I don’t care how she attempted to redeem herself by the end of the book, needed to get hit by a train. Or, at the very least, slapped, hard, possibly with a hammer. Spoiled, selfish, cruel, childish, the list is very long. Let’s just leave it at that. I loathed her.

The mom and dad started off really decent. I understood their problems and stress, but it was their behavior towards their own daughter that baffled me. The things they said to her and about her whether she was in the room or not were horrifying. It bordered on emotional and mental abuse, honestly. They treated Lou as though she were an idiot, which wasn’t the case at all. Meanwhile, they treated her sister as though she couldn’t do a thing wrong, even though she dropped out of school to have a baby, didn’t work, and sat about demanding everyone else to do everything for her. Will’s parents, for all that they were and weren’t, for all their flaws, I understood them. Their behavior made sense, and while I didn’t agree with a lot of their choices, they were real. Lou’s parents were just jerks.

Then there was her boyfriend. Let’s just sum it up to he was a raging A-hole as bad as her sister. Truthfully, the two should have hooked up. They would have made a perfect couple.

Now that I’ve properly ranted, let’s move on to the rest of the crew.

Our hero, a handsome, successful business man who’d had the misfortune of being at the wrong place at the wrong time. He was handed a rough hand at a point in his life when everything was peaces and cream. It’s the sort of tragedy that can happen to anyone, at any time. The kind that I’m surprised that doesn’t happen more often considering how often I see people ambling about with their phones pressed to their noses (especially now with the whole Pokemon Go craze). I’m guilty of this myself, the walking and texting (or more accurately, walking and writing).

Will Traynor started off exactly how you would expect someone in his position to behave. He’d basically lost everything and went from being self sufficient to needing a person every second of his day, right down to using the bathroom. I can’t even imagine what that would be like. But I sympathized with him, even while I wanted to beat him over the head with a frying pan most times. He was a good, realistic character. He was perfect for Lou.

Which brings us to the controversy that  surrounds this book. Everyone has an opinion on it. I’m not going to spoil it for anyone who hasn’t read it, but I will say this: I sobbed like a two year old being dragged out of a candy store. I was a mess. I was a mess in the middle of the bloody store. Aisle eight … the cereal aisle. It was my own fault. By that point, I already knew the book would destroy me and I only had three chapters, but I thought … three chapters … I can’t stop now. I’ll just take the book to the store with me. How bad could it be?

Well, lesson learned. Next time, I think I’ll just order pizza. LOL

All in all, LOVED the book. Loved the voice, the flow, the pace, and some of the characters. I definitely recommend this book for those who loved A Fault In Our Stars.