Like my sister warned me — get your tissues ready for this one.
“All I can say is that you make me… you make me into someone I couldn’t even imagine. You make me happy, even when you’re awful. I would rather be with you – even the you that you seem to think is diminished – than with anyone else in the world.”
Louisa Clark has been sort of muddling through life — she’s dated the same guy for 7 years without it really going anywhere, she’s constantly compared to her younger sister and found lacking, she still lives at home with parents who struggle to pay the bills. So when the little cafe she works at closes unexpectedly, she finds herself drifting — until she answers an ad for a private caregiver. The patient, Will Traynor, lives in total luxury — but he’s confined to a wheelchair with almost no moment below the neck. Will — who gets hit by a truck in the first chapter, ouch — used to skydive and climb mountains, and he feels furious and bitter about his life now. His parents hire Louisa not to care for him, really, but to be a companion.
Of course they fall in love. It’s a love story. But as usual, Moyes brings these characters to life and while I knew how it would end, it still hit me like a blow when we got there. It’s a lovely story, with not only romance but humor and a lot of moral uncertainty. I have two complaints. One: Patrick (Louisa’s boyfriend) is such a tool that I just couldn’t believe in him as a human being. Two: this brings me one step closer to finishing every book Moyes has written so far. Very upsetting.
