OMG how much do I love this book?! Jojo Moyes has just taken me on an intense emotional roller coaster. Louisa Clark is as wonderful as always and if this gets turned into a movie, Emilia Clarke will be just perfect in it. In Still Me, Louisa Clark moves to New York to care for the much younger second wife of a wealthy businessman and gets drawn into their family and society drama. She is also dealing with the challenges of her long distance relationship with Sam, who has just been assigned a beautiful young partner at work, and then meets an American who looks unnervingly like Will Traynor. 

There are so many reasons this book was such fun to read, but mostly, it was the characters. What an incredible cast! I loved the glitzy glamorous world of the Gopniks, which started out hilarious then revealed itself to be much more complex than first glance.

I absolutely ADORED Mrs DeWitt and her beloved dog Dean Martin, and that was just the most heartwarming, heartbreaking part of the book. One scene near the end involving these characters made me ugly cry, and I just wanted to hug them all.
Nathan is awesome as always, and I’m so glad Louisa got to work with him again. I also love new characters Ashok and Meena, and their fight to save the community library. There’s also a great scene where Louisa sees Ashok in civilian clothes for the first time (he’s usually in his doorman uniform). She realizes how work uniforms can render you invisible, and wonders if their wealthy employers would notice them more if they weren’t wearing uniforms.

I also loved the bits about Louisa’s family, particularly about Treena’s new relationship and how much happier and more content she now is.

I also loved the storyline about Louisa’s relationship with Sam. There are some hilarious bits (food poisoning) and serious conversations about the challenges of maintaining a long-distance relationship. I also loved the way Moyes treated grand romantic gestures in this book. It started as a silly and fun concept that Sam did at an airport mostly to humour Louisa in the beginning of the story, then as their relationship progressed, he understood a bit better about the significance of such gestures. In a heartbreaking series of emails, he confesses he was never the type to do grand romance, and asked Louisa if that’s what she wanted and she responded that she never wanted anything grand from him at all. And finally, I won’t spoil the outcome of the final grand romantic gesture in the book, but I will say that while I scoffed at the idea at first, I was completely, at-the-edge-of-my-seat riveted during those final scenes. It was beautifully written and I was hooked throughout.

Most of all, I loved how Louisa really grew into herself in this book. She has always kicked ass, but here, with the help of Mrs. DeWitt, she comes to the understanding that she’s great at caring for others, but she can’t live for others, nor can she structure her life to suit others’ adventures. I love how her story turns out, and I can just imagine a vintage Devil Wears Prada type Book 4.

Still Me is of my two favourite books of 2018 so far (the other being The Wolf by Nate Blakeslee). I just wanted to keep losing myself in this story, and even when I had to stop reading for real-life stuff, I was excited by the thought that this book would be waiting for me on my next break or when I got home.

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Thank you to Goodreads and Penguin Random House Canada for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.