Reads |

CWWreads – Me Before You

Goodreads synopsis:

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.  (original text from here)
Let me tell you now.  Upon reading the synopsis I actually didn’t think I was going to like it at all.  Not my cup of coffee.  I decided to be open-minded.  I mean, part of joining a book club it to try out books you would not normally choose, broaden your horizons and all that jazz. I was NOT prepared for this.
This is not the romance novel it claims to be.  It is a story of love and acceptance so deep it is life altering.   Love between real characters in a very real world not a fairytale.  I was not prepared for this book.  Nor for the roller coaster ride of laughter, tears, joy and heart wrenching emotion that this book took me on.  There I sat at 1am, clutching the book to my chest, ugly tears streaming down my face after I finished not wanting to let go.

I felt connected to Lou in a very real way.  Feeling all of her emotions so deeply it was like they were my own.   Will is not your typical hero.  His story touched my heart in a way I’ll never forget.  The “6 months” I spent with them taught me to remember :
“You only get one life. It’s actually your duty to live it as fully as possible.” – Will 

My favourite passage from the book…
“Hey Clark’, he said.’Tell me something good’. I stared out of the window at the bright-blue Swiss sky and I told him a story of two people. Two people who shouldn’t have met, and who didn’t like each other much when they did, but who found they were the only two people in the world who could possibly have understood each other. I drew a world for him, a world in which he was still somehow the person he had wanted to be. I drew the world he had created for me, full of wonder and possibility.” – Will

Have you read this book? If so, let me know what you thought of it.  What is your favourite recent read? All time favourite book?