Lily’s Library: Love and Other Words

A Review of “Love and Other Words” by Lily Lauritson

Content Warning: Adult scenes, underage drinking, strong language, death, implied sexual assault.

There is a saying I remember hearing when I was younger from a teacher of mine. I couldn’t have been older than 8 or 9 and yet my school was already teaching us about forgiveness and the strength it takes to accept your own fault. The saying went, “Sometimes you need a second chance because you weren’t quite ready for the first.” I know for a fact that my teacher did not come up with that on the spot as a I believed for some time. In fact, Google quotes about second chances and thousands of results will come up with varying degrees of similarity. However, what I do believe in is the sentiment. Sometimes life is moving too fast or in a strange direction for us to keep up with. Then some time will pass. A few years down the line you might reconnect with a family member who you lost contact with. Maybe a job opportunity will come into your hands that you once longed for but weren’t able to accept. Whatever it may be, a second chance is out there for all of us. Including Elliot and Macy in Christina Lauren’s heartbreaking and heart mending novel, Love & Other Words. Lauren takes readers on a page- turning journey that makes you feel as though your own heart is at stake while rooting for our main characters to reconcile the life-altering mistake and misunderstanding they experienced 11 years prior to the present day. Second chances are all Macy and Elliot are looking for. Will they come? And at what cost?

Our novel begins with our heroine, Macy Lea Sorensen. Macy is a shy and insecure girl who prefers the worlds imagined on pages to the one around her (me too). After losing her mom at a young age, Macy’s dad decides to buy a weekend house a few hours from their home. However, he does not just do this on a whim or because vacationing every weekend sounds nice to him. No. Macy’s dad, Duncan, is following a list that her mother, Laís, put together prior to her death in order to guide them on their new life as a family of two. What Laís might not have intended was for their new house to come with a large family living next door. Enter Elliot. One of many siblings, Elliot soon finds himself enamored with Macy and the interests that they share. What follows after their first meeting where Elliot is forced to help Macy move all of her books into her room is both warming and devastating. A love story for the ages really.

Lauren does a fantastic job of keeping readers intrigued by utilizing flashbacks in order to draw a picture of the love story between Elliot and Macy, while also adding a desire for answers when we learn that our two leads are no longer together, 11 years down the line. We are taken on a rollercoaster of a story filled with first kisses, insecurities, uncertainties, heartbreak, and longing. As the flashbacks show, Macy is reluctant once she begins feeling romantic feelings for Elliot seeing that she seems to think that he can date any girl he wants and that he is more in tune with the dating scene. But Elliot has a little not-so-secret secret. He only wants Macy. The two long for each other in the same way a flower does for water. The two understand each other better than they do themselves. The two fit together as if they are pieces of the same puzzle. They were made for each other. And while they get their sweet moments of kissing, embracing, and existing within each other’s universes, it seems as if Lauren doesn’t want readers to have nice things.

Throughout the sprinklings of flashbacks where we are entranced by the wholesomeness that Macy and Elliot exude together, we also learn where they are at in the present moment. Macy is working a full shift as a medical resident while Elliot has a career in a literary non-profit. In an effort to move on from the earth-shifting relationship they had when they were just teenagers, both characters are found in new relationships. However, none of this feels right. After seeing each for the first time in what seems like centuries, both know that it was like finding a part of yourself you left at home like your keys. They couldn’t exactly find them but knew that they were needed. Macy and Elliot begin spending more time together and seem to fall into a rhythm that is as familiar to them as their favorite sweater. They get coffee or dinner together, spend Thanksgiving at Elliot’s apartment, and Macy even accompanies him to one of his brother’s weddings. While the reader might be led into a false sense of happiness-I most certainly was-I am here to warn you that this all comes crashing down.

After Elliot expresses his frustration with Macy at not contacting him for the past several years, he decides to distance himself and drown his emotions in the open bar at his brother’s reception. However, Macy has lost too much to let someone go again. So, she doesn’t. Laure explains in the form of a flashback what happened all that time ago for the two inseparable lovers to suddenly become strangers.

It was New Years Eve of Macy and Elliot’s senior year, and they were spending it apart. After Elliot calls Macy and asks her to meet him at his friend’s house, while telling her for the first time that he loves her, over the phone, drunk, she spends some time deciding if it was worth the risk the be out driving. For Elliot, she decides, anything is worth it. She borrows her dad’s car and makes her way to the party where she finds a scene that makes her stomach drop. Elliot and a girl are half naked and passed out in a guest room while his friends stand around the door frame and laugh. In a haze of hurt and insecurity Macy goes back to her and her dad’s weekend house where she eventually tires herself out from crying. The next morning, she is awakened by her dad and is swiftly ushered into his car where they begin to make their trek back into the city. However, Macy would be the only one to return as her and her dad are driven off the road in a blur. Now, at the age of only 17, Macy has lost her mother, father, and the love of her life. So, she does what most people would do. She shuts down. She doesn’t contact anyone in the time it takes for her to finish her senior year and leave for college. Not even Elliot. Especially not Elliot. But did he really cheat on her? The person we could tell would sell his arm if it meant she was happy.

No. Elliot could not and would not cheat on Macy. As we are brought back to present day we are seated with both characters as they are rehashing the events from over a decade and the impact it had on their relationship. Elliot heartbreakingly explains that he didn’t even remember that night because he had been fed so many drinks that he couldn’t tell what was an apple or a baseball. Macy heartbreakingly explains that she couldn’t come to talk to him because anytime she thought about it all she could picture was a police officer telling her that her father had died. He died picking her up heartbroken over Elliot. The scene provokes so much emotion that it’s hard to read at times knowing that two broken and beautiful souls could have been together all this time if it wasn’t for teenage boys being the worst and communication skills not being accessible. But they have now. They have their second chance. And they would be damned if they didn’t take it. So, they do. And it’s beautiful.

A Playlist for Macy and Elliot
– Sweet Creature by Harry Styles (Macy’s Theme)
⁃ You Could Start a Cult by Niall Horan (Elliot’s Theme)
⁃ You Are in Love by Taylor Swift
⁃ Stay by Gracie Abrams
⁃ Doomsday by Matilda Mann

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