Love and Other Words
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by Christina Lauren
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Publication Date: April 10, 2018
Publisher: Gallery Books
Paperback: 433 Pages
Publisher Description
In Christina Lauren’s new novel, Love and Other Words, love, loss, friendship, and the betrayals of the past all collide. 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.
***
Christina Lauren has done it again… Love and Other Words is authentic, romantic, and well-written.
A romance that captures readers’ hearts and keeps them glued to the pages. I couldn’t help but fall in love with Macy and Elliot. Christina Lauren’s writing is so good that the reading went too fast, and, in the end, I wasn’t ready to let the story and characters go.
The young Macy and Elliot sound so familiar with their dialogues, their routine, and those fears that brought me back to adolescence. I always love characters-driven story, and I appreciated how the characters here, through their actions, appear so flawed, and realistic.
It’s so easy to feel connected with them, and I was so thrilled to know more about the events that took them apart for a decade-long silence.
Emotional, funny, and with so much heart, Love and Other Words, is absolutely a book I recommend, and it definitely lives up to the hype for me.
About the author
Christina Lauren is the combined pen name of long-time writing partners and best friends Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings. The #1 international bestselling coauthor duo writes both Young Adult and Adult Fiction, and together has produced fifteen New York Times bestselling novels. They are published in over 30 languages and have received multiple starred reviews.
Praise
“With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.” —Kirkus Reviews
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“Lauren writes of the bittersweet pangs of love and loss with piercing clarity, and delivers a resoundingly life-affirming tale of what it takes to claw one’s way to necessary healing, both romantically and personally.” —Entertainment Weekly
“Love and Other Words is a triumph, the kind of book that makes you feel so deeply for the finely drawn characters that you almost forget they’re fictional. You’ll be swept away by the heartbreak, the joy, the chemistry, and the charisma woven through the fabric of Macy’s and Elliot’s star-crossed relationship. As the story unfolds–expertly interweaving the past with the present—you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll root for Macy and Elliot to find their way back to each other against all odds. A true joy from start to finish.” — Kristin Harmel, internationally bestselling author of The Room on Rue Amelie
“A major success. It’s now obvious that anything Christina Lauren writes is worth checking out, even if it’s out of a reader’s comfort zone. 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… and would happily recommend it to any Christina Lauren fan or readers looking for a sophisticated story of love and loss.” —Hypable
“Christina Lauren has found a new sweet spot, with heartbreaking and hopeful language that will evoke the whirlwind immediacy of adolescence and the complicated choices of adulthood. Love and Other Words weaves past and present together in an emotional story that will have you declaring your favorite word is LOVE.” —Amy E. Reichert, author of The Coincidence of Coconut Cake
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