“You only get one life. It’s actually your duty to live it as fully as possible.”
If you loved Me Before You by Jojo Moyes, chances are you’re looking for another book that will make you laugh, fall in love, and totally break your heart. Few novels have managed to balance romance, humour, and devastating emotional moments quite like Louisa and Will’s story – but there are plenty of novels out there that can leave you with the same bittersweet feeling. Whether you’re looking for a heartbreaking romance, a story about finding love in unexpected circumstances, or just a read that will have you reaching for the tissues, we have you covered. From emotional contemporary romances to unforgettable stories about love, loss, and second chances, these are the best books like Me Before You to add to your reading list. Just be warned: if you’re not ready to cry, you may want to keep the tissues close by.
Me Before You Summary
Louisa Clark is an ordinary girl living an exceedingly normal life, who has barely been outside her tiny village. She takes a badly needed job working for ex-Master of the Universe Will Traynor, who is wheelchair bound after an accident. Will has always lived a huge life – big deals, extreme sports, worldwide travel – and now he’s pretty sure he cannot live the way he is. Yet Lou refuses to treat him with kid gloves, and soon his happiness means more to her than she expected. When she learns that Will has plans of his own, she sets out to show him that life is still worth living.
Me Before You brings to life two people who couldn’t have less in common – a heartbreakingly romantic novel that asks: “What do you do when making the person you love happy also means breaking your own heart?”
Me Before You Books In Order
Me Before You (2012) – Me Before You #1
After You (2015) – Me Before You #2
Still Me (2018) – Me Before You #3
Lou in Lockdown (2020) – Me Before You #3.5
The Fault In Our Stars – John Green
Kicking off our list of books like Me Before You is probably the most obvious comparison work: John Green’s tear-jerking novel, The Fault in Our Stars. Despite the tumour-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few more years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel’s story is totally rewritten.
Insightful, bold, irreverent, and raw, The Fault in Our Stars brilliantly explores the funny, thrilling, and tragic business of being alive and in love.
The Light We Lost – Jill Santopolo
Lucy and Gabe meet as seniors at Columbia University on a day that changes both of their lives forever. Together, they decide they want their lives to mean something, to matter. When they meet again a year later, it seems fated – perhaps they’ll find life’s meaning in each other. But then Gabe becomes a photojournalist assigned to the Middle East, and Lucy pursues a career in New York.
What follows is a thirteen-year journey of dreams, desires, jealousies, betrayals, and, ultimately, love. Was it fate that brought them together? Is it choice that has kept them away? Their journey takes Lucy and Gabe continents apart, but never out of each other’s hearts.
Check Out The Best Books Like The Light We Lost
Every Day – David Leviathan
It’s all fine until the morning that A wakes up in the body of Justin and meets Justin’s girlfriend, Rhiannon. From that moment on, the rules by which A has been living no longer apply. Because A has finally found someone A wants to be with – day in, day out, day after day.
An original novel similar to Me Before You, Every Day explores love and identity through an unforgettable protagonist who wakes up in a different body every day.
All Your Perfects – Colleen Hoover
Quinn and Graham’s perfect love is threatened by their imperfect marriage. The memories, mistakes, and secrets that they have built up over the years are now tearing them apart. The one thing that could save them might also be the very thing that pushes their marriage beyond the point of repair.
Like Me Before You, All Your Perfects is a profound novel about a damaged couple whose potential future hinges on promises made in the past. This is a heart-breaking page-turner that asks: Can a resounding love with a perfect beginning survive a lifetime between two imperfect people?
The Two Lives Of Lydia Bird – Josie Silver
Lydia and Freddie. Freddie and Lydia. They’d been together for more than a decade, and Lydia thought their love was indestructible. But she was wrong. On her twenty-eighth birthday, Freddie dies in a car accident. So now it’s just Lydia, and all she wants to do is hide inside and sob until her eyes fall out. Yet Lydia knows Freddie would want her to live fully, even without him. So, enlisting the help of his best friend, Jonah, and her sister, Elle, she takes her first tentative steps into the world, open to life – and perhaps even love – again.
But then something inexplicable happens that gives her another chance at her old life with Freddie. Lydia is pulled again and again across the doorway of her past, living two lives, impossibly, at once. But there’s an emotional toll to returning to a world where Freddie, alive, still owns her heart. Because there’s someone in her new life, her real life, who wants her to stay.
Five Feet Apart – Rachael Lippincott
Stella Grant likes to be in control – even though her lungs have sent her in and out of the hospital most of her life. At this point, what Stella needs to control most is keeping herself away from anyone or anything that might pass along an infection and jeopardise the possibility of a lung transplant. Six feet apart. No exceptions.
Will Newman is exactly what Stella needs to stay away from. If he so much as breathes on Stella, she could lose her spot on the transplant list. Either one of them could die. The only way to stay alive is to stay apart. But suddenly six feet doesn’t feel like safety. It feels like punishment. What if they could steal back just a little bit of the space their broken lungs have stolen from them? Would five feet apart really be so dangerous if it stops their hearts from breaking too?
The Best Of Me – Nicholas Sparks
In the spring of 1984, high school students Amanda Collier and Dawson Cole fell deeply in love. But as the summer of their senior year came to a close, unforeseen events would tear the young couple apart, setting them on radically divergent paths. Now, twenty-five years on, Amanda and Dawson are summoned back to Oriental for the funeral of Tuck Hostetler, the mentor who once gave shelter to their high school romance.
As Amanda and Dawson carry out the instructions Tuck left behind for them, they discover that everything they thought they knew was not as it seemed. Forced to confront painful memories, the two former lovers will discover undeniable truths about the choices they have made. And in the span of a single weekend, they will ask of the living and the dead: Can love truly rewrite the past?
Check Out The Best Books That Will Break Your Heart
Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).
