Genre Fiction
![Christina Lauren - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B009XCC1L2.jpg)
Love and Other Words
After a decade apart, childhood sweethearts reconnect by chance in New York Times bestselling author Christina Lauren's touching, romantic novel Love and Other Words…how many words will it take for them to figure out where it all went wrong?
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.
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.
Editorial Reviews
"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
"Love and Other Words is a beautifully crafted story of friendship and first love, of suffering loss and finding your soulmate. I felt every moment in this book." ― Vilma Iris
"With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair." ― Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Christina Lauren takes a unique look at the evolution of infatuation" ― Associated Press
"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
"Love and Other Words is a beautifully crafted story of friendship and first love, of suffering loss and finding your soulmate. I felt every moment in this book." ― Vilma Iris
"With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair." ― Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Christina Lauren takes a unique look at the evolution of infatuation" ― Associated Press
Readers Top Reviews
Shaztwirl
Usually I just fly through books one after the other but this one I kept putting down, delaying the inevitable. I didn't want to get to the "why." The reason it all went wrong. And when I did finally get there, the first part was totally expected. The second was a *gasp* moment. Did not expect that! Overall, the book was a real journey of emotions. Highs and lows. A very enjoyable reading experience.
Elaine AfanadorSh
I wasn’t sure if this would be my kind of book as I had gathered from previous reviews that it touched on topics that seemed rather sad and heartbreaking. But so many people highly praised it that I got curious, and I’m glad I decided it to give it a chance. It is a beautiful love story. It is so well written that it captured my interest from the very beginning and I just couldn’t stop reading. I wanted to know so badly what went wrong for them that they were no longer together in the present after having loved each other with such intensity. I kept wondering different scenarios but it was only at the end when realisation came seconds before the unexpected revelation. The book brought so many emotions and the ending with that very last sentence was so touching that it made me smile and cry at the same time. I highly recommend this book. It is now one of my favourite stories that has stayed in my thoughts long after I finished reading it.
CharlotteMElaine
I was hooked from page one. Before then, with the blurb. I have such an emotionally charged love for Elliot and Macy. I loved the skipping between past and present and the slow unraveling of not only their history but of their connections, their love and what seems like Macy's sanity, but is really her carefully formed 'easy' into something wild, and so very beautiful with Elliot. If you read something to kick start 2022 is should be this. And then read it at least once a year for the rest of your life. It's the kind of book that makes you want to be a poet, learn new words. Have a closet to hide in filled with beautiful books. Makes you appreciate things more. Cry with hurt for your favourite characters but also laugh out loud. I can't recommend this book enough.
Megan - Reading B
I decided to pick this up audiobook because so many of my fellow readers loved this book hard. I can see why LOVE AND OTHER WORDS connected with so many readers, but I didn't entirely feel the same level of adoration to the story as a whole. Through past/present storytelling, Christina Lauren takes the reader on a journey back to Elliot and Masie's past from when they first met through when they fell in love and later fell apart. Eleven years after their breakup, the two meet again and Elliot is just as in love with her as he was as a teenager. But one problem—Masie is engaged. Christina Lauren almost always writes delicious red-hot chemistry with great banter and dreamy heroes. Those things are present in Love and Other Words. Even though Elliot's character fell into the "too perfect to feel real" category, I still swooned hard over his intelligence, nerdiness, and sweetness. Lauren built up their love story as children so well, showing the reader how these two bookworm nerds fell hard for each other over the course of several years. I loved reading their past love story. In a way, we got a what I like to call a "double love story" because we got to see them fall in love twice. This book made me feel addicted to it because I kept needing to know what happens next. I love it when that happens! This is Christina Lauren's first foray into women's fiction, so I was curious to see how their writing talents transferred into this new genre for them. My biggest question was how they were going to craft the conflict. In the past, the conflict in some of their stories hasn't been the strongest, which causes the whole story to deflate when it should be exploding. In an attempt to explain away some of the plot contrivances, Lauren asks the reader to believe a lot. Somehow, Elliot didn't know that Masie's dad had passed away. After being best friends for years and deeply in love, Elliot didn't aggressively attempt to reach out to Masie. On the flip side, Masie didn't want to talk over what she saw with Elliot? I don't buy it. If she was that in love to drive hours to see him that night, that same girl would have been pounding at his door and shoving at his chest screaming, "WHAT THE HELL?!" Neither Elliot nor Masie ever met their mutual friends in nearly six years of friendship, until the night they broke up. Masie was engaged when she sees Elliot again. But it's a little too convenient that her fiancé is not really that in to her and was totally fine with her ending it. Both characters felt like the same character type we've seen in other Christina Lauren type books. We have the really nerdy sensitive guy and the female professional whose profession didn't really play a part in her character. Though, I did like see Lauren write a story with everyday people, instead of high-powered executives we've seen in the past. With t...
