Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

Genre: Contemporary Fiction 

Rating: 4.5

Picture taken by Mhitchner 

Reading this was similar to the feeling you get when you fall in love. It starts off seemingly innocent, as you are first introduced to the story and its characters. I mean, you just picked up this book because everyone keeps talking about it. You don't expect anything to come out of it though, but you just want to read it and try it out. You start getting to know the book a little bit more, see who the characters are and what their lives are all about. Slowly, but surely, you start digging through deeper layers that you didn't know were there this whole time. So one day, you realize, wow, I really love this book. You can't even part with it; you start taking it everywhere you go. I for example, chose to bring it with me during a day trip to the beach, and read it during my lunch breaks at work. 

It was a lovely thing, to hear about these characters and their lives. When they were sad, my heart broke for them, when they wanted something, I wanted for them to be successful in achieving them, and when they had happy moments, I found myself smiling too. 

Like all books (and most relationships) it had to end somehow. As I got closer to the end of the book, I had this irrational fear that after this story, I would never, ever read about these characters again. I would never be in their world again. And when it did end, I basically cried. 

All in all, the book was such a fast-paced page turner, and I could not put this book down. I adored the characters in this book. I believed in them, empathized with them, and rooted for them. I understood their perspectives completely, and I loved the fact that they were all flawed, making them so believable and relatable. I liked that the book also covered a lot of touchy, sensitive topics, but Jojo Moyes truly handled them all very well, and explored them in the most realistic way possible. 

Highly recommend this book if you like contemporary fiction! It is so much more than a love story, and even if you end up not liking it as much as I did, it's such a fast read that you wouldn't even know you passed the time.