Romance in the Time of Wordle

A Five-Letter Word for Love by Amy James

Pages: 368 Genre: romance

Rating: 3.5 Stars

Kindle Highlights (You can watch me try to solve Emily's Wordle games before her)

Emily is 27-years-old living in the small town of Waldon, and she doesn't have a lot going on. She's got big dreams of moving to a big city and doing ... something. But right now, she's the receptionist at an auto shop with a Wordle streak. A streak of 300+ days, in fact. Until one day when she has no idea what the word could be, so she has no choice but to turn to her quiet and honestly kind of rude coworker, John. Thus begins the first of many unexpected twists in Emily's life, where she learns that she has a lot more to figure out than she thought.

I reserved this book from the library back in February (when it would've been a much more seasonally-appropriate time to read it) after seeing it as an option for a Goodreads Giveaway at some point last year. I must admit, my intentions were less than pure. I thought the premise was so funny that I just had to read it. But honestly, as far as fun romance book go, I enjoyed this one. It doesn't take itself too seriously, which is good for a book whose main pitch is Wordle. While that's certainly not the main plot (and is arguably not really relevant to the greater story at all), I could respect the book's commitment to the theme.

The only thing that bothered me about it was that Emily really wasn't that good at Wordle. At the risk of sounding too much like a hater, in the moments where we'd get a play-by-play of her guesses, I usually was able to guess it before her, and her guesses were really bizarre (but I also like to play on hard mode). If you're not a Wordle fan, you might get tired of these play-by-plays, because it is silly to pause the plot for a moment to solve the Wordle puzzle, but I enjoyed a few extra games, so I didn't mind.

Outside of her questionable Wordle abilities, Emily was really just okay. For most of the book she struggles with the idea of what she wants her life to look like, and I don't think this ever felt fully realized. She seemed to be desperately trying to convince herself that she wanted a big life in the city, when everything that she said and did contradicted this. And I do think that was kind of the point, but then there needed to be a better resolution at the end. As it was, it sort of came across as her just making the decision she did because she's in a romance book that needs to wrap it up.

I did like John. While his wealth confused me, I thought he was a solid romantic male lead. And their romance made sense to me. I still find the typical Romance Book Plot Points a little bit silly, but I thought this book did a good job of building them out in a way that made a lot of sense. I felt like I was reading a (relatively) realistic narrative; we weren't trying to force certain plot points to happy just because it was time.

I'm not going to tell you the Wordle romance book is the best book in the world, but it did what it was trying to do well. It told a slightly-goofy story in a way that was well-written and clearly competent with strong characters and a solid blot line. Is it my favorite book ever? No. But I had a lot of fun reading it.