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.
Industry Reviews
"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."--Amy E. Reichert, author of The Coincidence of Coconut Cake "Vilma Iris"
"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."--Kristin Harmel, internationally bestselling author of The Room on Rue Amelie "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 "Hypable"