I have trouble reviewing books that are so well-reviewed. I can’t bring anything new to the table, so I tend to make the reviews short and sweet. This was a slow burn for sure, because you know there’s a past, you hope there’s a future, but you also want to follow the story to find out how we got to where we started the book.
I didn’t have the extensive past that Macy and Elliot have with my relationship. But when he showed up at my school Freshman year, I declared we would be best friends. So I was especially drawn to their story. As I work my way through Christina Lauren’s back catalog, I find so much to love that I had missed out on by starting with their newer works. Heat and tension, the slow-burn, heartbreak and tears, young love, and mature love, this one had it all.
Clearly, I love this writing duo and I adored this book. So I will leave with a few of my favorite quotes from the book:
“I like your kind of quiet. Your heart isn’t quiet.”
“It feels like he’s part of my nuclei, entwined with my DNA.”
“His kiss is an aching prayer; devotion pours from him.”
“You’re not my outside, you’re my every side.”
*swoon*
Read this review on Amazon, Goodreads, and Bookbub.
Love and Other Words is available on Amazon for $8.99
Blurb:
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.
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