One True Loves caught my devoted interest in the first chapter. That’s when Emma Blair’s husband, lost at sea in a helicopter crash years before, calls just as she’s finishing up a family dinner with her financé. The plot enfolds two love stories and Emma must make a choice, her forever choice. Author Taylor Jenkins Reid yanks a rope around your heart and keeps it restrained between the pages in this beautifully written tale that could have no better ending.

In addition to One True Loves, published in 2016, Reid has a number of titles under her belt including Daisy Jones &The Six, now a miniseries on Prime video. Visit her website at TaylorJenkinsReid.com for more information. 

In this blog, I offer a different type of book review — one that’s combined with vocabulary building. Included here are a few interesting words I found in One True Loves, written by Taylor Jenkins Reid and published by Washington Square Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.

The definitions here are for just a few words from One True Loves that I found interesting, unfamiliar, or unusual in use:

hooligan: noun. (perhaps from Patrick Hooligan—Irish hoodlum in Southwark, London 1898) Ruffian, hoodlum. 

From One True Loves: 

“To them, I had gone from a precious little girl to a hooligan overnight.”

conciliatory: adjective. 1. a. not flowing in a current or stream (stagnant water) b. Stale 2. Not advancing or developing. 

From One True Loves: 

“’I’m going to give Eli a conciliatory hug and then, Olive, we can head home,’ she said.”

gamine: noun. (French feminine of gamin) 1. A girl who hangs around on the streets. 2. A small playfully mischievous girl. adjective Of, relating to, or suggesting a gamine.   

From One True Loves: 

“The only change she can see is my short, blond hair.

‘It’s very gamine.’”

assuage: verb. 1. To lessen the intensity of (something that pains or distresses): ease. 2. Pacify, quiet. 3. To put an end to by satisfying: appease, quench.  

From One True Loves: 

“It was gestures like that, small acts of intimacy between them, that made me think my parents probably still had sex. I was both repulsed and somewhat assuaged by the thought.”

stagnant: adjective. 1. a. not flowing in a current or stream (stagnant water) b. Stale 2. Not advancing or developing. 

From One True Loves: 

“People aren’t stagnant. We evolve in reaction to our pleasures and pains.”

 Definitions are typically from the dictionary that comes with my Mac or Merriam Webster.

“The word is only a representation of the meaning; even at its best, writing almost always falls short of full meaning. Given that, why in God’s name would you want to make things worse by choosing a word which is only cousin to the one you really wanted to use?” ― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.