Love and Other Words

4.75⭐️
Absolutely devoured and love love loved this book!!! From the flashbacks to the angst to the pining… I can’t stop thinking about it! However I am demoting it from a perfect 5 because I didn’t love the reason for their fall out as much as I could’ve, but that also may be because the trope that it fell under is one of my least favorites, but it was handled pretty well so I can’t complain too much. Other than that I loved it sooo much!

Omg!! Sweetness overload! Loved seeing their love bloom from the beginning and reignite!!

Why I waited so long to read this, I have no idea. I ADORED this book. Christina Lauren has crept up into top five favorite romance authors this year.

This one tugged at the heartstrings while also featuring a few plot issues and frustrating character moments. I had high hopes for this due to the characters' shared love of reading and words but unfortunately it did not quite live up to my expectations. Of the many CL books I've read, this was not the best. My biggest problem with this was the heavy lean into the miscommunication trope. I can certainly understand and relate to the ways grief can interfere here and make it difficult to communicate, but it felt like the life-changing element of Macy and Elliot's relationship was that they could ultimately be honest with one another - yet they fell apart because of dishonesty. Additionally, I felt 11 years was a long time to be apart then have them both return to the same feelings of deep love; I personally would have appreciated a little more time spent on them each falling back in love. 11 years means a lot has changed; they -- and I -- needed time to reacclimate to one another. I also felt deeply uncomfortable with the circumstance that caused their rift. Frankly, the suggestion to me was of SA on Elliot via Emma and this was never addressed. It's not often you see victim blaming of a male who has been SA'd, but I read that here. I would have liked to dig deeper into the nuances and emotional trauma there. The focus was instead only on Macy's trauma (which was deserved, yes!) following that incident and Elliot was just left alone with his own trauma AND no support from Macy. The writing, as usual, from CL was emotional, wry, and did affect me, but overall the story problems minimized my enjoyment.

Such a perfect book I was wondering about if I should give it 4 or 5 because of some tiny things of the ending but BRO this is the most beautiful book. I wanna live in it so bad