Showing posts with label jojo moyes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label jojo moyes. Show all posts

Saturday, March 5, 2016

Movie Release & Publisher Giveaway: Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

I am so excited to share this movie release for one of my favorite books of all time!  
Many of you have probably already heard that Me Before You by Jojo Moyes will be hitting the big screen in June 2016. You can bet I will be there opening weekend to see this highly anticipated movie release. 


Enjoy this post to get an overview of the book, my review, movie details, the trailer and a publisher giveaway! 

Published: December 31, 2012
Publisher: Pamela Dorman Books/Viking
Purchase Links:  Amazon |  Barnes & Noble
Lou Clark knows lots of things. She knows how many footsteps there are between the bus stop and home. She knows she likes working in The Buttered Bun tea shop and she knows she might not love her boyfriend Patrick.

What Lou doesn't know is she's about to lose her job or that knowing what's coming is what keeps her sane.

Will Traynor knows his motorcycle accident took away his desire to live. He knows everything feels very small and rather joyless now and he knows exactly how he's going to put a stop to that.

What Will doesn't know is that Lou is about to burst into his world in a riot of colour. And neither of them knows they're going to change the other for all time.

My Thoughts
Beautiful... unforgettable... heart-breaking. This book will stay with me forever.

Louisa and Will made my face leak. It doesn't happen often and probably won't happen again for a long, long time, but yes this book brought tears to my eyes. Final verdict?? I might not be dead inside. I can safely say that Me Before You will be my pick for Best Book I Read in 2014. Amazing and emotional to such a degree I wasn’t expecting.

You only get one life. It’s actually your duty to live it as fully as possible.

And that is exactly what Will Traynor was doing until a tragic accident left him as a quadriplegic. Before his accident, he was on top of the world, managing a multi-million dollar company and enjoying exotic vacations and dynamic adventures that most of us only dream of. So when his life takes the worst turn anyone can ever imagine, and he’s confined to a wheelchair and dependent on nurses and caregivers around the clock for his basic needs, this character sadly loses his will to live.

When Louisa is hired on for “suicide watch” as Will’s caregiver, she makes it her mission to bring that will to live back to him and teach him to embrace a new life with his reality. She forces him from outside the confines of his home which he hasn’t left in two years, except for doctors’ visits and medical exams. Louisa brings a small semblance of happiness back into Will’s life for the first time since his accident. However, despite the changes Louisa manages to make, his sense of hope and what he wants from life is still in tatters.

Together, they develop a heartfelt relationship that eventually turns into the truest form of love, but sometimes love isn’t enough when you’ve defined your life a certain way and fate has made living to your fullest impossible.

This story really broke me. I was emotional from the very beginning, and as the story continued to unfold, my heart felt like it was carefully coming undone. It was extremely sad to see how a quadriplegic not only has to battle the physical decline of their body as movement is impaired, but also how our world today makes it so difficult for them to access the simplest of places. I never truly knew what a burden they suffer and how much they rely on others for the simple actions I take for granted.

The ending of the story was unbelievable to me. I think I sat there for over an hour stunned and broken. I was not expecting what happened at the end and I applaud Jojo Moyes for her bold storytelling. She refused to sacrifice realism in her fictional world and her execution of the ending was incredible. This story will stay on my mind for a long time and I look forward to picking up other books by this author. She impressed me with her skill of flawless storytelling. Amazed and emotionally moved!
5 Snowflakes
Movie Tie-in Book Edition
Movie Trailer of Me Before You

Exciting news!! The publisher has graciously agreed to give away a copy of Me Before You AND After You by Jojo Moyes to one lucky WinterHaven Books follower. Simply fill out the rafflecopter and share a thoughtful comment about this post for a chance to win. All qualified entries will be verified to include a comment on this post. Open to US Resident only.
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

New Release: After You (Me Before You #2) by Jojo Moyes

After You (Me Before You #2) by Jojo Moyes
Publication: September 29, 2015
Publisher: Penguin
Purchase Links:  Amazon  |  Barnes & Noble
How do you move on after losing the person you loved? How do you build a life worth living?

Louisa Clark is no longer just an ordinary girl living an ordinary life. After the transformative six months spent with Will Traynor, she is struggling without him. When an extraordinary accident forces Lou to return home to her family, she can’t help but feel she’s right back where she started.

Her body heals, but Lou herself knows that she needs to be kick-started back to life. Which is how she ends up in a church basement with the members of the Moving On support group, who share insights, laughter, frustrations, and terrible cookies. They will also lead her to the strong, capable Sam Fielding—the paramedic, whose business is life and death, and the one man who might be able to understand her. Then a figure from Will’s past appears and hijacks all her plans, propelling her into a very different future. . . .

For Lou Clark, life after Will Traynor means learning to fall in love again, with all the risks that brings. But here Jojo Moyes gives us two families, as real as our own, whose joys and sorrows will touch you deeply, and where both changes and surprises await.

After You is quintessential Jojo Moyes—a novel that will make you laugh, cry, and rejoice at being back in the world she creates. Here she does what few novelists can do—revisits beloved characters and takes them to places neither they nor we ever expected.

My Thoughts
You are going to feel uncomfortable in your new world for a bit. It always does feel strange to be knocked out of your comfort zone… There is hunger in you, Clark. You just buried it, like most people do. ~Will…

Nothing short of beautiful! An emotionally charged story about healing and learning to believe in yourself after a painful loss. I am in love with this story!

After You was definitely my most anticipated releases for 2015, and it absolutely didn’t disappoint one bit! I fell in love with Me Before You and remember wanting just a few more chapters of Louisa’s life after that climactic ending. Well, the sequel After You feels like the epilogue I desperately needed!

This story picks up about eighteen months after the ending of Me Before You. I’ll try to keep this as spoiler-free as possible, but to get straight to the point, Louisa is truly struggling with moving on from the events that unfolded with Will Traynor. She’s working at a job she has no interest in and is floundering from day to day just trying to keep herself from an impending downward spiral.

After a fateful night where she suffers from a horrible accident, she returns to her hometown to recover and there begins her attempt to heal from her wounds both physical and emotional. Through her recovery, she meets a cast of wonderful characters that slowly become the foundation for her new life.

There were so many layers to this novel that only created a feeling of being fully invested in Louisa Clark’s life. After Will Traynor’s fateful decision in Me Before You, we get to journey with Louisa during her road to recovery. She meets Lily Houghton-Miller and Sam Fielding, who I absolutely adored because in their own ways, they brought back the Lou I knew from the first book. I appreciated how Lily challenged Lou to try and move on without a feeling of guilt clouding her every move. I also enjoyed seeing Sam break down Lou’s walls and teach her to love again. Beautiful set of characters that were a perfect addition to this story!

There was also another set of secondary characters that added a whole new flavor to this novel. The Moving On Circle was a breath of fresh air! Daphne, William, Natasha, Fred, Marc and Jake each complemented the story with their own journey toward recovery. I enjoyed their therapy sessions that revealed their insecurities, fears and hopes. It was all so serious, yet shared with a level of brevity that kept the story flowing with ease.

Louisa’s journey wouldn’t be complete without a few scenes with her quirky but loveable family! Adored them! This family was absolutely flawed to perfection! It was quite clear they cared about Louisa and her struggles. It’s nice to experience a story where family is still one of the most important things in life.

Finally, the spotlight deservedly belongs to Louisa Clark. Throughout this entire journey, she showed compassion, bravery, determination and heart. There wasn’t one moment where I faltered in my allegiance to her plight. I wanted her to become not only the Louisa we knew and loved in Me Before You, but an even better version of that character as she worked hard to recover from a painful experience. Lou has become my favorite female character of 2015! Loved her!!

There were moments and passages in this story that truly hit me hard. JoJo Moyes clearly has a skillful way of cutting to the core of her readers’ emotional pockets with quick punches that leave you breathless for air. After You had many of those moments of brilliance. Overall, I believe fans of Me Before You will enjoy journeying with Louisa Clark as she learns to fall in love and believe in herself again. Beautiful… absolutely beautiful!
5 Snowflakes


About the Author
Jojo Moyes is a British novelist.

Moyes studied at Royal Holloway, University of London. She won a bursary financed by The Independent newspaper to study journalism at City University and subsequently worked for The Independent for 10 years. In 2001 she became a full time novelist. 

Moyes' novel Foreign Fruit won the Romantic Novelists' Association (RNA) Romantic Novel of the Year in 2004.

She is married to journalist Charles Arthur and has three children.

Social Media Links
Website  |  Goodreads  |  Twitter  

JoJo Moyes Interview
We have a treat for you!! Recently, Sophie Kinsella sat down with JoJo Moyes to talk about the writing process and experience of bringing After You to life.  Enjoy!!