Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

They had nothing in common until love gave them everything to lose . . .

Louisa Clark is an ordinary girl living an exceedingly ordinary life—steady boyfriend, close family—who has barely been farther afield than their tiny village. She takes a badly needed job working for ex–Master of the Universe Will Traynor, who is wheelchair bound after an accident. Will has always lived a huge life—big deals, extreme sports, worldwide travel—and now he’s pretty sure he cannot live the way he is.

Will is acerbic, moody, bossy—but Lou refuses to treat him with kid gloves, and soon his happiness means more to her than she expected. When she learns that Will has shocking plans of his own, she sets out to show him that life is still worth living.

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A Love Story for this generation and perfect for fans of John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, Me Before You brings to life two people who couldn’t have less in common—a heartbreakingly romantic novel that asks, What do you do when making the person you love happy also means breaking your own heart?

Why I Picked It Up

This book came up with a friend the other day on a catch-up and I've been in a strange reading mood lately. After my latest book revision, I've been trying to quiet my own brain. I've had the worst insomnia streak of my entire life, but there's not much I can do to quiet the racing thoughts. So any book that appealed had to be possibly one I'd read before, but engaging enough to feel like I was reading it for the first time. One that would also make me cry in a cathartic way also seemed like a good idea. Me Before You was a prime pick for that heart-tugging romance, while also having multiple books in the series that I hadn't yet read that I could continue into.

I first read this book a solid decade or so ago. I vividly remember finishing it on the bus either to or from a lacrosse game and being extremely teary, which means it was sometime in high school. 2016 maybe?

As the synopsis notes, it came out around the time of sick-lit i.e. The Fault in Our Stars, which various people have various opinions about. I respect the intention of the depictions; I also completely resonate with my friend who despises books of that nature because her mom passed from cancer and she finds nothing about a tragic romance to be actually romantic. A quadriplegia/caregiver storyline definitely falls under the worth-questioning umbrella as the story deals with assisted suicide, agency, and who gets to make their own choices.

So going into Me Before You the second time, I found myself kicking into critic or self-examination mode a little more i.e. turning over my thoughts surrounding not only the book, but the factors surrounding its publication, frenzy, etc. Some think it milks tragedy, like A Little Life. There's a small part of me that recognizes our bias towards "airport books" too, in expecting them to be saccharine or weak by virtue of their popularity—an overcorrection of the way we weight taste and obscurity. All in all, it was the type of prism book I felt would also tell me a lot about my current reading and sharing habits.

About the Book

The book focuses on Louisa, a twenty-six year old woman, after losing her job in a small English town. The café is closing down, and it's the middle of the recession—meaning there's no work to be found. Her family all lives together, and they rely on her income to pay their bills—which contributes to the density of their dynamic. She puts in some night shifts at a chicken factory, the JobSeeker center is minimally helpful, and she eventually takes on a caretaking role nearby, which turns out to be for a thirty-four year old man who was handicapped in an accident two years ago. The family is wealthy; the man (Will) is frosty. But Louisa's desperate and determined, and can clean and make tea and overall keep watch, because he's not to be left alone for longer than fifteen minutes at a time. He's clearly depressed, but also very much does not want to live anymore, and his family is desperate to turn him around within the next six months.

Characters & Tone

Over the last few years, I've mulled a lot over caretaker psychology in the course of revising my own book, so a lot of how that's grappled with in Me Before You felt familiar. When you get your happiness and purpose from being helpful.

There's a lot baked into the caretaker role beyond genuine affection, need, capability, etc. We've seen it from the motherhood side in books like Having It All by Corinne Low.

I remember thinking Me Before You was great, but in adulthood, I'm especially impressed by the layers of family obligation, relationship history, etc. baked into the core conflict of Me Before You. There's a richness there and a duality to each person.

Take, for example, Lou's relationship with her sister Treena. I could actually dissect this relationship for an entire book club because I absolutely loved how it was written.

Treena was the smart one, the one pushed through college with their sacrifices, before dropping out her senior year with a pregnancy; after that, their family unit revolves around taking care of her young son, Thomas. It's why Lou's been shoved into the tiny closet room despite being the breadwinner. Why she's the only one helping their parents with the bills because Treena always has to look over Thomas, which is absolutely a lot but leads to some resentment that she's always accounted for because she has a kid whereas Lou is shouldering a lot more alone. At one point in the book, Treena decides to go back to college, and that compresses so many feelings for Lou because she's the one making it possible for Treena to go. Moyes does a fantastic job baking in love and service and resentment and responsibility in a way perfect for a caregiver character in which no decision can really be made in a silo; when people—like Will—tell her to spread her wings, make her own choices, etc., it rings empty because any decision she makes will reallocate the burdens of the household.

There were times when Treena wiped her tears and times when Treena was an absolute bitch, and one thing this book handles in a great way is that on nearly every interpersonal conflict, not one person is wholly right.

The amount of guilt and confusion rolled into the question of "what do I deserve?" along seemingly small decisions—like requesting the bigger bedroom—is so good. Moyes does such an excellent job depicting the crampedness, the misery of seeking small joys, the steady partner who's not quite enough.

Lou isn't perfect either; she's timid, with good reason. Many people know the Me Before You moment of her squealing over the bumblebee tights Will gifts her.

Patrick, her boyfriend, is a fitness archetype obsessing over fat-to-muscle ratios, carb vs. non-carb months, triathlon culture. He gets jealous despite not being a great partner, and their trajectory is more reluctantly plodding than anything. Still, I loved how well-written their conflict was too.

The parents, too. Nathan, the nurse. All of them revolved around Will, but felt independently frictional.

And Will, of course. The entire conflict—wanting Will to adjust to a life that makes him miserable—is built around the despair of having gotten an unlucky roll of the dice. His characterization is consistent, and it works.

What Hits Me When Rereading

I love rereading because I'm always going to pick up on different aspects.

I think right now, certain bits of the plot hit me harder, like the smallness of a life in a recession when you have family responsibilities and very little extra money. Lou's observations about Will and those surrounding him having this sheen of "things going well" is so true to life versus the careful way you tiptoe when you're used to being not-so-lucky.

There were questions that hit me hard personally, and others that hit me hard thematically because they deal with curiosities I grapple with in my own book: the complexity of caregiving, the need to be needed and how you extract that from the affection for someone, agency when you're backed into a corner. (They're very different books, but they iron over certain dynamics I love to mull over, and so tonally both bittersweet.)

I loved how real each character felt. For example, Lou's mom is very angry about the way the events of the book go, and she's not necessarily wrong either; the variety of attitudes surrounding the concept of assisted suicide, death with dignity, etc. are evergreen, and that's why situations like this one—Will being desperate to escape his circumstances—or mercy killings in Hurricane Katrina pique our public discussions, lawsuits, and emotions. It's an individual, case-by-case question, and that's partly why Will and Lou's romance is so emotional to many. There was no black-and-white villain here; you understood each character even when you were rooting against them.

I also really enjoyed the vivid details of events like their outing to a wedding, or the vacation Lou and Will take near the end, probably for similar feelings: a craving for wideness and sensory exposure after small, cramped months hunched over work and a computer screen. I think a lot about the difference between happiness and relief, and that's a theme of Me Before You for sure: are you making things better at any point or briefly escaping the storm clouds?

There's no real way for me to read—or reread—that doesn't incorporate recent books, recent feelings, or an awareness of what will jump out at me differently, and finishing Me Before You for the second time reminds me of that.

Overall Thoughts

Me Before You is a tearjerker. In high school, I bawled over it, and loved the movie adaptation. In adulthood, it brought me to the verge of crying, and I braced myself against it. There's no right answer here, but my questions with years as a book reviewer this many years in revolved around—did I think it was effective? Did I think it handled sensitive issues sensitively, with appropriate depth and complexity rather than shock factor?

Of course, the tragedy of the circumstances (an accident survivor wanting not to be there anymore) loom over the narrative and color everything sad, but the contrast was beautiful and the conflict felt impactful for more than tugging at reader emotions. I can see also why people might take the book's messaging to the extremes, so I can't speak for "the disabled experience" or anything related; however, I have cared for someone throughout hospice, cared for suicidal friends, etc. and so it rang true for the considerations of being adjacent to grief: when you're not the one in misery, how much of your own emotions can you consider? What is them vs. you (me before you) and how much should you consider others when determining your own happiness or misery?

I think why Me Before You strikes me as resonant rather than forcibly tragic is that it really does give everyone in the plot room to express the contours of their opinions around Will—who disagrees but will support him, who is vehemently against his desire to die, who is convinced he's selfish because he should be considering their own love for him. The conversations feel good in here because it's not rooting for one interpretation, and that's why I do think (from my able-bodied rep) that it's a good book for considering some of the hard topics around end-of-life. There's not one right answer, which is also why it's meant to be representative of one experience rather than all experiences. In hindsight, it seems well done, so I can appreciate the delicacy of its execution even more the second time around.