Pages: 411 (Ebook)
Series: Me Before You #2
Summary: Describes what happens to Lou after the events in Me Before You.
Rating: 4/5
You never know what will happen when you fall from a great height."You don't have to let that one thing be the thing that defines you."
I was really excited to find out that Me Before You had a sequel. I don't know why I didn't read it as soon as it came out. Probably because the copy I have doesn't work properly in my ebook reader and I don't like reading on my laptop.
I was really happy with this book. I'm not as emotionally invested in the events in it as I was in Me Before You but overall it was an interesting read. I got to see what happened with Lou after Will's decision at the end of Me Before You. Me Before You was a really tragic book to read and this one is not like that. At first, I was really scared on what would happened with this book because of what happened with the first one but I was really satisfied and happy at the end. There were some parts that had a slow pacing and was kind of boring but the lines that Lou and the characters had were fun to read so I didn't get the urge to stop reading the book. It took me a few days to finish it because I had school and I'm still not over my reading slump.
Writing, World, Story: I find Jojo Moyes's writing really great. I like reading books that is set in Europe and I find their language fun and entertaining to read. There are words that are unique to them/ they have their own version. The story she made for this book was a really satisfying one. She gave closure and happiness to the characters that Will left behind. Many of them connected through their grief and their support with each other was really nice to read. It had a lot of subplots that pertains to a certain character and it was really great reading about them.
BEWARE: The following will kind of include spoilers.
Characters:- Louisa Clark: At first, Lou got really boring. She didn't feel like living her life. She didn't find any happiness in the things that she was doing. It was nice to see her moving on after Lily gave her a purpose and she started becoming friends with the people from the group. She started becoming the Louisa I have grown to love. The scene where she punched Garside was really amazing because you could feel her intense hatred towards one of the men who ruined Lily's life. It was terrible that nothing happened to Peter though.
- Lily: At first, I really didn't like Lily. She was a brat and she was an asshole towards Lou even though Lou really supported her. After her back story was revealed, I almost cried. She had terrible experiences growing up and it didn't help that Tanya was such a terrible mother. It was great that at the end she found someone who wanted to take care of her for who she is and someone she got along with. I felt sad when she left Lou's apartment but they weren't really related anyway.
- Ambulance Sam: I really like Sam. He was the opposite of Will. He supported Lou and took care of her. When he first appeared, I really thought that he would Lou's partner and I was right. I liked them together and I almost threw my laptop away during the part where he got shot. I almost couldn't take it and I kept thinking that Lou was such an unlucky woman when it came to guys.
- Tanya Miller: I really really hated this woman. It was a good thing that Camilla lectured her. She was really selfish and didn't think of her daughter that much. She denied Will of something / someone that would've probably been enough to make him stay. I kept thinking that what if Will found out about Lily. Would he stay?
‘I think she loves me. But she loves herself more. Or how could she do what she does?'
- Camilla Traynor: I really admired her determination to connect with Lily and the way she took care of her and how they connected well was fun and interesting to read.
- Richard Percival: I really hated this guy at first but he was fun to read about after he made up with Lou. They became friends and he supported her and stopped always criticizing what she was doing.
‘Right … Uh. Okay.’ He hesitated. ‘He was actually shot? With an actual gun?’
‘You can come and inspect the holes, if you like.’ My voice was so calm I almost laughed.
We discussed a couple more logistical details – calls that needed to be made, a visit from Head Office, and before I rang off, Richard grew silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘Louisa, is your life always like this?’
- Donna: Sam's ambulance partner was really a supportive character. She took care of Sam and Lou at some point. I really admired that she stayed in her job even though she knew the risks.
- The Members of the Group: That group was really fun to read. They had many dialogues that made me laugh especially with William. His side comments were the best.
If it was me that died, I’d hate the thought of Olaf falling in love with someone else.’‘You wouldn’t know,’ said William. ‘You’d be dead.’
'I don’t want anyone thinking … I mean, that’s not what I want people thinking when they think of my husband. That he had a tiny –’
‘I’m sure nobody thinks that about your husband.’
‘I will, if you keep going on about it,’ said William.
I don’t want you thinking about my husband’s penis,’ said Natasha. ‘In fact, I forbid you to think about my husband’s penis.’
‘Stop going on about it then!’ said William.
'When someone we love is snatched from us, it often feels very hard to make plans. Sometimes people feel like they have lost faith in the future, or they become superstitious.’
‘I thought I was going to die,’ said Natasha.
‘You are,’ said William.
‘Not helpful, William,’ said Marc.
Relationships - Friendship, Family, Romance:
- Bernard and Josie Clark: I really find these two adorable. They went through a fight throughout the book but in the end made up when Bernard humbled himself towards Josie.
‘What if she decides that I’m the one with no life? What if all this new stuff turns her head and …’ He gulped. ‘What if she leaves me behind?'
‘I don’t care. I’ve been through hell, Josie. But I’d do it again if it means we can get things back on track. I miss you. So much. I don’t care if you want to do a hundred college courses – feminist politics, Middle Eastern studies, macramé for dogs, whatever – as long as we’re together. And to prove to you exactly how far I’d go for you, I’ve booked myself in again next week, for a back, sack and – What is it?’ ‘Crack,’ said my sister, unhappily.‘Oh, God.’ My mother’s hand flew to her neck.Beside me Sam had started to shake silently. ‘Stop them,’ he murmured. ‘I’m going to bust my stitches.’
- Lou and Sam: I find their relationship really fun and cute. They had their problems but I admired Sam for staying even Lou mentioned Will a lot during their relationship. It was great that they made up in the end. The establishment of their relationship was a really awkward scene because Lou was so wrong. HAHA. I felt bad for her and I was glad that she wasn't right. In the end, I'm glad that Sam supported her and let her do the New York thing and I hoped that everything went alright with them.
‘Stay there,’ he said, brushing the drops from his head with a hand.
‘You can’t sit around in those wet clothes.’
‘This is like the opening to a really bad porn movie,’ I said. He stood very still and I realized I had actually said the words out loud. I gave him a smile that went a bit wonky.
‘Okay,’ he said, raising his eyebrows.
He rubbed at his hair. ‘Are we still talking about Jake?’
‘Of course I’m talking about Jake. How many other sons have you got?’
‘Jake isn’t my son.’
I stared at him.
'Jake is my sister’s son. Was,’ he corrected himself. ‘He’s my nephew.’
‘Jake’s … not your son?’
‘I don’t have any children. That I’m aware of. Though the whole Lily thing does make you wonder.’
I took his hand and shut the fridge door. ‘I need to show you something.’ His eyes lit up briefly. ‘Not that, no, you bad man. That will have to wait till later.’
‘I actually want to kill him.’
‘It can be arranged.’
I looked round at Sam to see if he was joking, and was the tiniest bit disappointed when I saw he was.
When she left the room, he let out a long breath, then stared at the ceiling for a moment, as if composing himself.
‘What?’ I said.
‘Thank God you hit him first. I was afraid I was going to kill him.’
- Lou and Nathan: I really liked that they stayed friends even though Nathan lived in another part of the world now. He even recommended her for a job and listened to her rants and stories about Will and Lily.
- Lou and Lily: I really liked that they developed a sort of sisterhood at the end. Even though at first they argued a lot, they really got along in the end and Lou was able to connect with her even though the thing that connected them was a really terrible thing. It was hard to read about Lou worrying about Lily especially when she was missing.
‘My dad had the hots for you. How mad is that?’ She gasped. ‘Oh, my God! In a different universe, you could have been MY STEPMUM.’
We gazed at each other in mock-horror and somehow this fact swelled between us until a bubble of merriment lodged in my chest. I began to laugh, the kind of laugh that verges on hysteria, that makes your stomach hurt, where the mere act of looking at someone sets you off again.
‘Did you have sex?’
And that killed it.
- Lou and Treena: I really liked reading about their sisterhood. Even though Treena always criticized what Lou was doing, she was there to help her when she had problems. I liked the fact that Lou let Treena and Thom stay at her apartment.
'Okay. Well, I do remember reading a thing in social psychology about how teenagers find too much face-to-face contact exhausting.’
‘You want me to talk to her through a door?’ One day I would have a telephone conversation with my sister that didn’t involve the weary sigh of someone explaining something to a halfwit.
- The Traynors and Lily: I really liked that in the end Lily was adored by all the Traynors. Especially, Georgina. Even though they had issues at first, they were able to resolve it and they became the family that Lily wanted and deserved. Unlike her mother, they took care of her and didn't judge her.
- The Clarks: I really like their family relationship. It was great that even though they had issues, when they're together you would really feel their bond. The way Josie and Bernard supported Lou after her accident and was proud of her in the end after she got her life sorted.
Dad rubbed his chest. ‘Is there anything else?’
‘Like what?’
‘Anything else you need to tell me. You know, apart from jumping off buildings and bringing home long-lost children. You’re not joining the circus, or adopting a kid from Kazakhstan or something?’
‘I promise I am doing none of the above. Yet.'
Some of My Favorite Lines:
And when it came down to it, what was the point in re-examining your sadness all the time anyway? It was like picking at a wound and refusing to let it heal. I knew what I had been part of. I knew what my role was. What was the point in going over and over it?
‘Wow. What are you wearing?’
‘I – I work in an Irish pub.’
‘Pole dancing?’
Sometimes I felt as if we were all wading around in grief, reluctant to admit to others how far we were waving or drowning.
But no: the cottage was brutally impersonal. I thought of my own flat, my utter failure to personalize it or allow myself to turn it into any kind of a home. And I felt suddenly leaden, and desperately sad.
What have you done to us all, Will?
‘You know the real difference between you and your dad? Even when he was at his unhappiest he wouldn’t have treated anyone like this.’
'And I have huge admiration for you picking yourself up and moving on. Sometimes just getting through each day requires almost superhuman strength.'
‘With accommodation,’ I said quietly.
‘And you wouldn’t have to wear that godawful shiny green dress?’
‘I hardly think my outfit was a good enough reason to emigrate.’ I laughed. Nobody else did. ‘Oh, come on,’ I said.
‘If anything, I like you too much. I like you so much that if it went wrong it would feel like that again. And I’m not sure I’m strong enough.’
‘How is that going to happen?’
‘You might go off me. You might change your mind. You’re a good-looking bloke. Some other woman might fall off a building and land on you and you might like it. You could get ill. You could get knocked off that motorbike.'
‘Last night. When I was bleeding out. I heard you.’
Our eyes locked. And in that moment everything shifted. I saw what I had really done. I saw that I could be somebody’s centre, their reason for staying. I saw that I could be enough.
‘Lou, I don’t know what will happen. Nobody ever does. You can set out one morning and step in front of a motorbike and your whole life can change. You can go to work on a routine job and get shot by a teenager who thinks that’s what it takes to be a man.’
‘You can fall off a tall building.’
‘You can. Or you can go to visit a bloke wearing a nightie in a hospital bed and get the best job offer you can imagine. That’s life. We don’t know what will happen. Which is why we have to take our chances while we can. And … I think this might be yours.’
‘And what we learn through sharing our memories and our sadnesses and our little victories with each other is that it’s okay to feel sad. Or lost. Or angry. It’s okay to feel a whole host of things that other people might not understand, and often for a long time. Everyone has his or her own journey. We don’t judge.'
‘Except the biscuits,’ muttered Fred. ‘I judge those Rich Teas. They were shocking.’
‘And that, impossible as it may feel at first, we will each get to a point where we can rejoice in the fact that every person we have discussed and mourned and grieved over was here, walking among us – and whether they were taken after six months or sixty years, we were lucky to have them.’
And then, holding my passport tight in my hand, I turned away. He would be there, watching as my plane gathered speed and lifted into the great blue sky beyond. And, with luck, he would be there, waiting, when I came home again.
