A book that made you cry

A book that made you cry

Title: Me Before You
Author: Jojo Moyes
Publication date: 2012

In the "which came first" realm, this book came before the challenge. As I plod through my Kindle purchases, I decided that Me Before You would be my next book. I'd just read From Baghdad to America and I really deserved a reward. Not certain which challenge it would fulfill but with "a book written by a female author" in my back pocket, I started.

I was quickly drawn into the story. Louisa Clark is a young woman who loses her job in a cafe and must find work quickly since she is the breadwinner in her parents' household. She is hired to care for Will Traynor, a 30-something man who is a quadriplegic. The contract provided by Will's mother is for six months. Desperate for the income with few options available in the small English town where she lives, Lou sets off on this new role.

Jojo Moyes pulled me right into Louisa's life. I was rooting for her; angry at her family for treating her so poorly; angry at her boyfriend for taking her for granted; and perplexed by Will Traynor's demeanor toward her.

"I got to study Will Traynor up close, in those first couple of weeks. I saw that he seemed determined not to look anything like the man he had been; he had let his light-brown hair grow into a shapeless mess, his stubble crawl across his jaw. His gray eyes were lined with exhaustion, or the effort of constant discomfort ... They bore they hollow look of someone who was always a few steps removed from the world around him."

Even though Louisa is in her late 20s, I think of Me Before You as a a coming-of-age story. Perhaps it's better to consider it a coming into one's own as she finds her world and interest expanded by someone who, now confined to a wheelchair, lived a life of adventure and culture.  

It's a great skill when a writer can make you hate a character for 150 pages and then fall in love with him for the remaining 150 pages of the book. Moyes does this. I've already classified it as a book that made me cry but I was surprised by the turns in the story and truly appreciated them.

Four stars (though I'm seriously considering increasing it to five)

Next challenge: A book based on or turned into a TV show