Novel Review: Love and Other Foreign Words by Erin McCahan

Rating (Out of 5): ~3.5

Genre: YA Contemporary Romance

Publisher: Dial (Penguin)

Release Date: 2014

Spoilers?: Light.

Buy it here: Amazon. Barnes and Noble. Powells.

Goodreads Synopsis:

Can anyone be truly herself--or truly in love--in a language that's not her own?

Sixteen-year-old Josie lives her life in translation. She speaks High School, College, Friends, Boyfriends, Break-ups, and even the language of Beautiful Girls. But none of these is her native tongue -- the only people who speak that are her best friend Stu and her sister Kate. So when Kate gets engaged to an epically insufferable guy, how can Josie see it as anything but the mistake of a lifetime? Kate is determined to bend Josie to her will for the wedding; Josie is determined to break Kate and her fiancé up. As battles are waged over secrets and semantics, Josie is forced to examine her feelings for the boyfriend who says he loves her, the sister she loves but doesn't always like, and the best friend who hasn't said a word -- at least not in a language Josie understands.

The Cover:

I think this cover is very cute. The font and lettering is fun, and I think it represents the book pretty well. It's very much easy to carry around, too, and doesn't focus too much on the romance, but Kate's curiosity instead.

Review:

This book has one of the most accurate titles I've seen in a while. Josie is extremely smart for her age, is already in college, but she doesn't know what love is. One day, she decides that she needs to understand it. Her sister is engaged to a guy she absolutely refuses to accept, and she can't comprehend why her sister thinks she loves him. So starts her quest to understand love.

Josie goes through a bit of a journey in this book. She starts a relationship with a previous school-dance date, whom likes her a lot, and whom she tries to love back. Then there's her young college professor, who she's convinced she feels love at first sight with. And during all of this, she's fighting with her sister, and her best friend Stu is always there.

I really enjoyed Josie's voice. She's odd, possibly a little autistic, but generally on a different level than everyone else. She can only take so much socialization, she likes things a certain way, and she looks at every interaction with people in a different way. I feel like the real romance took a long time to actually show up, as Josie was so distracted for so long and Stu was just letting her do her thing until she was ready. I also found that really sweet, though, and thought that the ending was really good. The way things wrap up with not only Stu, but also with her sister and her sisters fiance, was really nice. And I really liked her family; they're all very close, and they're always around and doing things together. It was really sweet, but also a lot of fun. The banter was great.

This book was a little slow in its pace, but Josie needed to contemplate and process everything, and she needed to take her time getting to the end. I really enjoyed the characters, though, and it was a lot of fun to read.