Me Before You is a novel of romantic fiction.

The book features Louisa Clark and Will Traynor as its main characters. It explores the question of whether love can bring two people who had nothing in common together by giving them everything to lose. Louisa Clark is an unassuming and ordinary young woman with an even more ordinary life. She calls herself ‘one of the invisibles’ and refers to her steady boyfriend, a personal trainer, in a similar manner. She was scared by boys with beer several years prior to the beginning of the story and has, as a result, never ventured out of the borders of the sleepy village that she lives in. When the café that she works in closes down, she realises that she has no employable skills. She takes a job as Will Traynor’s caretaker. Will is wheelchair-bound after an accident, which has turned him into a temperamental and rude being. Before the accident, Will lived life on a large scale, doing big business, engaging in extreme sports, and travelling the world, and now he can’t walk or even feed himself. He is bossy and moody, and convinced that the only thing he has control over is his own death.

Lou realises that she must grow a backbone to compensate for Will’s broken one, and throws herself into finding ways to make him happy. He becomes involved with teaching her how to stand up for herself and take risks, and she finds herself becoming stronger and more bold the more time that she spends with him. However, she soon finds out that he has plans to end his own life, and must scramble to give him a reason to live. Will she be able to?

The author has woven a touching and heart-wrenching story through simple language and the creation of relatable, flawed, and complex characters. Me Before You was published in 2012 by Penguin UK in paperback