{Review} Love and Other Words by Christina Lauren (@ChristinaLauren @GalleryBooks)

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.

Macy Lea Sorensen leaned about loss at the tender age of ten when her mother died. But before her death, she left her husband a “roadmap” of how to raise their little girl knowing she was loved. 
As fate would have it, this map leads them to a cabin in the small town of Healdsburg and down a path where nothing will ever be the same. 

​“Elliot,” I say, pushing past the clog in my throat at the feel of his name there, “I’m sorry. I really have to run. I need to be at work soon.” 

He bends so that he’s level with my face. “Are you kidding?” His eyes go wide. “I can’t just run into you at Saul’s and be like, ‘Hey, Macy, what’s up,’ and then you go to work, and I go to work, and we don’t talk for another ten fucking years.” 

And there it is. Elliot was never able to play the surface game. 

“I’m not prepared for this,” I admit quietly. 

“Do you have to prepare for me?” 
​
“If there’s anyone I have to prepare for, it’s you.”

​Elliot was the bookish sibling in the large Petropoulos brood. He could always be found hiding in a quite space with a book in his hand.  And this is exactly how he meets his new neighbour. 
 
Macy immediately forges a special bond with the lanky boy she discovers reading in her closet.  Together they share a love of books, of words and soon, each other.  
 
But life doesn’t always go according to plan. Almost eleven years without her true love has left Macy numb and just barely hanging on.  Now that Elliot is back in her life, she’s going to have to decide if she’s willing to place what’s left of her soul back into the hands of the one who shattered it so long ago.

“I love you,” he says. “I’m sorry that I can’t help my body’s reaction to you.”

 “It’s okay.” I count out fifteen heartbeats before I’m able to add, “I love you, too.” 

He reacts to this with a tiny catch in his breath, a slight tremor in his shoulders—it’s the first time he’s ever heard me say it. 

“You do?” 

My cheek rubs along his when I nod. “I always have. You know that.” 

His lips are close enough to my ear that they brush against the shell when he asks, “Then why did you leave me?” 
​
“I was hurt,” I tell him. “And then I was broken.”

​Love and Other Words is a Christina Lauren like we’ve never seen them before. They have somehow become deeper, more tender and far more heartbreakingly honest.
 
Yes, their signature swoon is still in full force, but it’s tempered with an ever-present undercurrent of sadness that only a great loss can inspire.  
​
The result is a one-of-a-kind reading experience that will have you smiling through tears and believing that love is really worth risking it all…  

Get This Book!