Book Club Guide

Me Before You

by Jojo Moyes · 2012 · Literary Fiction

Key themes

Autonomy, dependency and what we owe each other
Love that cannot solve every problem
Class and the limitations of care

About this book

Louisa Clark, an awkward young woman in a small English town, takes a job as caregiver for Will Traynor, a former adventurer now paralysed following a road accident. Their relationship develops into love — but Will has already made a decision about his future that love cannot change. Moyes's novel raised passionate debates about disability, autonomy and what it means to support someone you love in a choice you find devastating.

Published in 2012, Me Before You sold over ten million copies worldwide and sparked significant debate about its portrayal of disability and autonomy — conversations that its enormous readership engaged with seriously.

Discussion questions

The novel's central question — whether Will has the right to make his own choice about his life — is deeply contested. How did you navigate your own position on it?
Lou is a working-class woman hired as a carer for a wealthy man. How does class shape their relationship — and does the novel fully reckon with the power imbalance, or does love paper over it?
Will is defined partly by his frustration at what his former life was like. Does the novel glamorise that life — and does it matter?
Disability rights campaigners have criticised the novel for suggesting that life with disability is not worth living. How do you engage with this critique — does the novel invite it, or does it resist it?
The novel is categorised as romantic fiction but ends in ways that challenge genre conventions. What does Moyes gain from that refusal — and what does it cost?