At turns hilarious and gut-wrenching, this is a tremendously fun slow burn

together.”
“Finally, right?” I bite my lip, feeling the urge to scream, I’m so happy.
I’ve never felt this way before.
Tonight we’re going to fall asleep together, in our apartment, in our bed. When everyone is gone, we’ll
forget about the boxes we still have to unpack. He’ll follow me under the covers with that hungry tension in
his eyes, his bare skin sliding over mine until we’re a breathless, sweaty tumble. We’ll fall asleep,
entangled, without even realizing it.
And I’ll wake up before it’s light out, and want him again.
In the morning, he’ll be here. His clothes will be here, and his books, and his toothbrush. I’ll pour cereal
while he showers. Maybe he’ll come find me in the kitchen holding a cup of coffee and I won’t know he’s
there until I feel the press of his lips to the top of my head. The anticipation I feel for this everyday life of
moving around him is so enormous, it fills me with a heavy, shimmering heat.
We aren’t even really dancing; we’re just swaying in place again, like we did at the wedding. But tonight,
we have no secrets remaining, and no scary conversations looming. The past decade seems like a foggy
blur, like we took a long road trip from one point of the earth and back again, traveling in a wide circle,
destined to end up here.
Elliot’s hands slide lower on my back, his head bends close to mine. George cracks a joke about us
needing to get a room. Andreas cracks back that George is the one with the knocked-up wife. And then Miss
Dina is off on a tear in the kitchen about babies, and maybe more weddings, and I watch Elliot struggle to
block it all out. He winces, shifting his glasses up his nose, and studies me the way he always did, as if he
could read my mind one blink at a time.
Maybe he could.
“Favorite word?” he whispers.
I don’t even hesitate: “You.”

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S
acknowledgments
ome of our books have little pieces of our history, some have pieces of people we know, and some have
little pieces of us. And then there are books like Love and Other Words that have big pieces of all three.
I (Lauren) was raised in Northern California and spent most of my weekends from age seven onward on
the Russian River with my family, in one of three funky little cabins we owned throughout the years. They
weren’t fancy, they weren’t fussy – they were small, occasionally damp, shaded by trees, and surrounded by
the babbling of the Russian River, or a little creek outside. Much like Duncan did for Macy, my parents got a
weekend retreat as a way to get us out of the stress of our lives for a couple days each week, and at a time
when buying a modest home in a small town wasn’t prohibitively expensive for a middle-income family.
The area – from Jenner to Guerneville to Healdsburg to Santa Rosa – has been a constant in my life. My
sister and I were both married in Healdsburg. My parents spent some of their happiest times together in
the Russian River valley. We go there for vacations, reunions, girls trips.
Sometimes I think about my childhood weekends now, and how lucky we were to have a place like that. I
think, too, about how it is to be a mother with small children, who – even at seven and eleven – sometimes
still seem so plugged into the digital world. I wonder what it will be like for them, and whether it will be
hard for me to not give them the same kind of retreat, where they can read for hours in a closet, or make a
friend like Elliot, or simply unplug for two solid days.
But mostly I’m sort of devastated, because much of this area has burned in the recent fires in and
around Santa Rosa. A house I rented this summer while we were editing this book is now nothing but ash
and rubble. But it makes me exponentially more grateful that we wrote this book, that the memories of
those areas and spaces are still fresh in Elliot and Macy’s story.
This is our first foray into women’s fiction, and it really was a complete joy to write. We were encouraged
by our two most influential book people: our editor, Adam Wilson, and our agent, Holly Root, who waited for
the right idea to come along before urging us to try a different voice. Gallery Books / Simon & Schuster is
an unbelievably supportive place and we are grateful to everyone there for reading and loving and helping
promote this book as much as they have: Carolyn Reidy, who heads up S&S; Jen Bergstrom, who runs
Gallery Books; our marketing loves, Liz Psaltis, Diana Velasquez, Abby Zidle, and Mackenzie Hickey. Thank
you, Laura Waters, for keeping us all organized, on time, and for giving Adam crap regularly since we’re not
around to do it in person. Thank you to the publicity department and particularly Theresa Dooley and our
own precious Kristin Dwyer who, most days, feels like the Third Musketeer. We adore the cover, John Vairo
and Lisa Litwack. And to the S&S sales team: next time in NYC, your drinks are on us – pinkie promise.
Thank you, Erin Service, for not only reading this over and over, searching for every tiny error, but also –
as Lo’s sister – for living so many of those Cabin Moments. Thank you, Marcia and James Billings, for taking
us there. We lost one house in a flood and kept the next for over a decade, but every inch of that world will
be precious to me forever.
Thank you, Christina, for writing this book with me, for learning and caring about this place as much as I
do, for tunneling back in time to figure out who these kids were. We came up with these characters seven
years ago, and I’m so glad we found the best place to put them.
We are so lucky that we get to do this and marvel every time that when people ask us what we do in our
free time, we get to say, “We think about what we’re going to write next.”

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READERS GROUP GUIDE
This readers group guide for Love and Other Words includes an introduction, discussion questions, and
ideas for enhancing your book club. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find
new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your
conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.

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Introduction
When Macy and her dad move in to their weekend house in the wine country outside of San Francisco, little
do they realize how dramatically this decision will impact the rest of their lives. It is in this house that Macy
first falls in love with her neighbor Elliot and comes to understand the complexity of love and heartache.
The novel is told in two timelines – in the past, when Macy’s mom has just died and her father is searching
for a weekend home to help heal their fractured family, and in the present, when Macy and Elliot run into
each other suddenly after being estranged for almost eleven years. At once thrilling and heart-wrenching,