Love and Other Words by Christina Lauren tells the story of how complicated things can get when your greatest love is intertwined with your greatest loss.
About ‘Love and Other Words’ by Christina Lauren:
Love, loss, friendship, and the betrayals of the past all collide in this first women’s fiction novel from New York Times and #1 international bestselling author Christina Lauren (Autoboyography, Dating You / Hating You).
The story of the heart can never be unwritten.
Macy Sorensen is settling into an ambitious if emotionally tepid routine: work hard as a new pediatrics resident, plan her wedding to an older, financially secure man, keep her head down and heart tucked away.
But when she runs into Elliot Petropoulos—the first and only love of her life—the careful bubble she’s constructed begins to dissolve. Once upon a time, Elliot was Macy’s entire world—growing from her gangly bookish friend into the man who coaxed her heart open again after the loss of her mother…only to break it on the very night he declared his love for her.
Told in alternating timelines between Then and Now, teenage Elliot and Macy grow from friends to much more—spending weekends and lazy summers together in a house outside of San Francisco devouring books, sharing favorite words, and talking through their growing pains and triumphs. As adults, they have become strangers to one another until their chance reunion. Although their memories are obscured by the agony of what happened that night so many years ago, Elliot will come to understand the truth behind Macy’s decade-long silence, and will have to overcome the past and himself to revive her faith in the possibility of an all-consuming love.
‘Love and Other Words’ by Christina Lauren review:
I’ll be honest, when Christina Lauren announced they were publishing women’s fiction I was a bit nervous. I’ve rarely ventured into the genre and wasn’t sure how different it may be from Christina Lauren’s contemporary romance novels. However, I worried for nothing because I was quickly hooked by Love and Other Words.
For those that might be nervous about what to expect from Love and Other Words, to me it just read like a slow burning contemporary romance novel. It not only focused on the heroines love story — but also the major losses that she had faced throughout her life. Both of these things are very much intertwined in Macy’s story, so it only makes sense that they’re equally represented in the novel.
There are enough heated scenes, for me, and plenty of sweet ones too. And although the story does build slowly, revealing the character’s past history together along with their present reconciliation, I never found myself bored by the storyline. Quite the opposite. Each little bite of information I was given throughout the book just made me even more hungry to learn more.
The prologue quickly sets up the storyline that sets into motion the biggest events of Macy’s life. After the death of her mother, which was a major blow to Macy and her father, they bought a vacation house. It’s there that Macy meets Elliot for the first time and they instantly bond over their love of books and Elliot’s ability to get Macy to open up about feelings she won’t discuss with anyone else.
Macy and Elliot grow up looking forward to their weekends together, reading and discussing all of their troubles. The older that they get, though, the harder it is for them to ignore the fact that they’re closer to each other than they are to anyone else. Not only that, but they also grow increasingly attracted to one another. Because neither one of them wants to lose that bond though, they’ll admit their feelings for one another but won’t act on it.
Meanwhile, in present day, Macy and Elliot are dealing with running into each other after not seeing each other for many years. Though the reason for their distance isn’t unveiled for some time. Their chemistry returns quickly, along with their history and all of the things left unsaid between them. But their reunion is complicated by the fact that Macy is already engaged to someone else — however Elliot’s return begins to show her all of the things she’s been missing.
I genuinely adore Love and Other Words, and would happily recommend it to any Christina Lauren fan or readers looking for a sophisticated story of love and loss. I guarantee that readers won’t want to put this novel down until they get all the answers to Macy’s and Elliot’s story. It left me both emotional and amazed in the end, as well as excited to see what else these authors have planned for us in the future.
It’s now obvious that anything Christina Lauren writes is worth checking out, even if it’s out of a readers comfort zone.
Love and Other Words by Christina Lauren will be released on April 10! Pre-order now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, or Kobo. And don’t forget to add it to your Goodreads!
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