Love and Other Words (Deluxe Edition)
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Overview
From New York Times bestselling authors Christina Lauren comes the fan-favorite second-chance romance that has captured hearts worldwide — now reimagined in a stunning deluxe edition with sprayed edges and four-color endpapers.
Macy Sorensen has her life arranged exactly the way she wants it. She's deep in the grind of a pediatrics residency, engaged to an older, financially stable man, and keeping her emotions carefully under lock and key. It's not a passionate life, but it's a safe one.
Then she runs into Elliot Petropoulos.
Elliot was her first love — the bookish, gangly boy who became her best friend, then something far more. After Macy lost her mother, it was Elliot who helped coax her heart back open. They spent weekends and lazy summers at a house outside of San Francisco, devouring books, swapping favorite words, and growing up together in the best possible way.
But something happened the night Elliot finally told her how he felt. Something that drove Macy into a decade of silence.
The story moves between Then and Now, weaving together the tenderness of their teenage years and the complicated reality of who they've become as adults. Two people who were once everything to each other, now strangers carrying old wounds they've never fully examined.
When their paths collide again, the careful world Macy has built starts to crack. Elliot, still piecing together what truly went wrong between them, must reckon with the past — and with himself — if there's any hope of reaching her again.
This is a love story told in two timelines, built on shared books, quiet moments, and the question of whether a love that was broken at its peak can ever really be recovered.
"Impossible to put down. TOP PICK" — RT Book Reviews
Reviews and Author Praise
"Steamy moments, tender revelations… a confident adult love affair."
— Kirkus Reviews
"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
"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, New York Times Bestselling author of The Sweetness of Forgetting
"Impossible to put down. TOP PICK"
— RT Book 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."
— Simon & Schuster
"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
Topics and Key Themes
Narrative Tropes
Slow Burn
He Falls First
Second Chance Romance
Friends to Lovers
Dual Timeline
Key Themes
Grief reshaping love — losing her mother closed Macy off from the one person who understood her most.
Words as intimacy — shared books and favorite words build a bond deeper than confession.
A decade of silence — one unspoken night fractures two lives for ten years.
Safe choices versus real ones — Macy's controlled life cracks when her first love reappears.
Healing on your own terms — recovering from old wounds requires confronting what you buried, not just who.
Who is this book for?
Primary Genre: Contemporary Romance
Spice Level: 🌶️🌶️🌶️ 3/5: Spicy
Open-door romance with balance. You’ll find some on-page intimacy with moderate detail, woven into the story. A sweet spot for readers who enjoy both emotional depth and a bit of steam.
Fans of Emily Henry and Colleen Hoover will enjoy the emotionally rich second-chance romance, dual-timeline storytelling, and bittersweet journey of two childhood sweethearts navigating grief, regret, and the possibility of reclaiming a lost love.
About the Author
Christina Lauren is the combined pen name of longtime writing partners and best friends Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings, the New York Times, USA TODAY, and #1 internationally bestselling authors of the Beautiful and Wild Seasons series, Autoboyography, Love and Other Words, Roomies, Josh and Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating, The Unhoneymooners, The Soulmate Equation, Something Wilder, The True Love Experiment, The Paradise Problem, The Romance Revival, and In a Holidaze. You can find them online at ChristinaLaurenBooks.com or @ChristinaLauren on Instagram.
Similar Authors
Colleen Hoover, Emily Henry, Mariana Zapata
Reader FAQs
It sits at the heavier end of the emotional spectrum. Grief, long-held silence, and personal healing are central to the story, not just backdrop. Kirkus Reviews notes 'tender revelations,' and Entertainment Weekly describes it as 'resoundingly life-affirming,' which suggests emotional depth over light escapism.
Both authors deal in emotionally heavy contemporary romance with dual timelines and characters carrying unresolved pain. Love and Other Words places stronger emphasis on quiet, literary intimacy — books, words, and childhood friendship — and moves at a slower, more reflective pace than most Hoover titles.
The book is written for an adult audience. It contains steamy content — Kirkus Reviews specifically notes 'steamy moments' — and deals with grief and adult relationships. It is best suited to readers 18 and older.
The pacing is slow and deliberate. The story is built around a slow-burn romance told across two timelines, with the emotional tension accumulating gradually through shared memories, grief, and a decade of unresolved silence rather than rapid plot movement.
The book contains depictions of parental loss and grief, which are central to the main character's emotional arc. It also includes sexual content, rated at a moderate-to-high level. Readers sensitive to themes of bereavement and estrangement should be aware before starting.
Info
ISBN: 9781668092217
Published Date: May 6, 2025
Publisher: Gallery Books
Language: English
Page Count: 463
Size: 9.38" l x 6.38" w x 1.50" h
Category
Fiction