The late author Sophie Kinsella convinced fellow writer Jojo Moyes to complete her bestselling romance novel Me Before You.

Speaking on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, Moyes has credited Kinsella with inspiring her to keep going, when she nearly gave up on the book after writing 20,000 words.

It became an international bestseller and was adapted for the 2016 film starring Emilia Clarke and Sam Claflin.

Kinsella, whose real name was Madeleine Sophie Wickham, was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer in 2022 and died earlier this month at the age of 55.

Speaking to Lauren Laverne on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, Moyes described how she almost abandoned writing her bestselling novel because she was feeling depressed after years of little commercial success.

She said: “I met up with my friend Sophie Kinsella and had lunch with her and I was broke at the time and I was feeling quite depressed because I thought my writing career was coming to an end.

“I told her the story of my 20,000 words over lunch and she just looked at me, and she said, ‘You have to write this book, you do know that? You have to write this book’.

“When I got home, her husband, Henry, called me up and said, ‘Jojo, Maddy… told me about this book and I think you should write it too’.

“I love her for many reasons, but that’s one of them.”

The Me Before You series follows the life of Louisa Clark, a working-class girl who ends up as a carer for paraplegic Will Traynor, a wealthy man who is paralysed after a motorcycle accident.

The book was based on a news story Moyes had seen about a young rugby player who had been left quadriplegic after an accident and persuaded his parents to take him to a Swiss assisted dying clinic.

“I knew I loved this book and I knew it was the best version of itself that it could be, but I had no idea it was going to resonate in the way that it did,” she told Laverne.