source: borrowed from a friend
rating:★★★★✩
from goodreads:
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.
my review:
love and other words was a good all in one book. if you’re looking for smut this is not it. it has the love, the funny, the heart-break all in one.
elliot petropoulos the book boyfriend that you would love to be real. the smart, funny, caring, all about one girl type of guy. i LOVED elliot. everything about him, the way he cared so deeply for macy & his family. he was a great character and really made the story in my eyes.
someone who macy really needed in her crazy world.macy sorensen, typical teenager but one with a lot of damage and trauma behind her and her personality. macy was sort of annoying in her teenage years, she was the typical jealous girl and it kinda irked me because she knew he loved her more than he even loved himself. that annoyingness kind of carried over into her adult life but that understood given everything that happened to her, i just think she could have been better.
overall, love and other words was a great book. i laughed, i sobbed, i felt the heart-wrench. but it was kind of predictable. there was only one part that really made me bawl that i would have never expected and i feel like it made the book, it made everything make sense. i finished this book in one day because i wanted to know what happened all those years ago that made her who she is, she pretty much turned into just a lump of a human just existing and settling but i wanted to know why and i NEVER would have guessed that. i love that we got some of her mom throughout the book and her influence in macy’s life. her dad was amazing and really rolled with what he was given and did then damn best job he could do. he was a very influential character, in my opinion, in this book. i wish we got more of her and elliot throughout the 10 years and after they rekindled but we always want more right?! love and other words is a cute easy read to get all the feels in one.
favorite quotes:
“i never got to fall out of love, i just had to move on”
“i can be enough of your world that it feels like everyone is”