Me Before You

She narrows her eyes. "Dinner. With or without Mr. BlackBerry?"
"What?"
"Mr. BlackBerry makes me feel like Mrs. Gooseberry." The pot again. "I feel like there's always a third person vying for your attention."

Will Traynor, loves extreme sports, traveling, successful business man with the finger on the pulse..... until a motorcycle accident changes everything. Suddenly he is a quadriplegic and has decided that he does not want this life and wishes to end it.

"Well, it comes to something when the best you can all say about my new career is that it's better than hauling chicken carcasses around the inside of an aircraft hangar," I said.

Louisa Clark lives in a world, where everything is the same until she loose her job at The Buttered Bun tea shop. She knows nothing about quadriplegia when she's hired to be a private care assistant (care and companionship) for Will. 

The book may start like any other chick-lit book, but it goes beyond that label as it also makes you think about bigger issues. How would you react if you suddenly ended up in a wheelchair or similar constantly needing help - where your body will no longer cooperate even though your brain works like it always has? If there are no hope for any recovering, should it be your choice if you want out: as in getting help to die?

My own MS diagnosis came rolling back into my mind as I was temporarily (the temporary part was unknown to me at that point) in a wheelchair, when a doctor told me, what is was wrong with my body. I was lucky that I manage to train myself out of the wheelchair, but what if I had not? One day you are fine and the next? No one ever really know what tomorrow brings.

The book makes to think. What if I was in a situation like Will - would I want to end my life? How would I find the slightest hope? What it was somebody close to me, that it happened to? Would it be selfish of me to wand a severely handicapped/sick person to live on despite his/hers wish to peacefully leave this life? I simply do not know what to think, as I see both pros and cons. Hope I never get in neither situation as I am at a loss what to think of this.

I began to compile a new list - things you cannot do with a quadriplegic.

1. Go on a tube train (most underground stations don't have lifts), which pretty much ruled out activities in all of London unless we wanted to pay for taxis.

2.........

Oh wait a minute. There is something the author might not have considered/known - and honestly, I had the same thought as above, when I was diagnosed with MS - two months before a planned trip to London - and still not out of the wheel chair. A English lady who was in the hospital bed next to me told me not to think underground but above ground. Answer: a red bus. Since then I have realized that she is right: a red bus have an automatic ramp that the drive can activate if a person in a wheelchair wants to get on/off the bus. and a lot of the sidewalk curbs at intersections/pedestrian crossings are at even level with the street to be easy accessible for a person in a wheel chair. If I am too tired to walk when in London I have started to get on the red busses instead - as there are more steps at an underground station that you realize, and if the escalators do not work to to have to walk up/down them there are a LOT of steps at the stations in central London.

I was told, that I would cry my heart out when getting close to the book's end - me, I usually never cry when reading a book.... but I did, and several times during the book. Another thing - the issues in this book really put your mind at work so I did not pick up another book for days as mind still trying figure out what to think. My expectations? Exactly what did I expect? Not sure as was curious about the book knowing it has sold a million-plus copies. I like the book, as it surprised me but also challenged me to think about serious issues even though I can not decide what to think.