A Five-Letter Word for Love by Amy James || Book Review

When I saw the book's cover containing Wordle guesses, I was intrigued.

The synopsis sounded really interesting too—small-town romance, a quest to find your purpose, and falling in love through Wordle. It was something out of the ordinary just because the trendy game was involved. So, I gave A Five Letter Word for Love a shot.

what is A Five-Letter Word for Love about?

A heartwarming and humorous romance in which an unlikely couple fall in love over Wordle. 

Twenty-seven-year-old Emily doesn’t have a lot going well in her life right now. She dreams of a creative career but works as a receptionist in an auto shop. She longs for big city life but lives in a small town on Prince Edward Island. She craves a close group of friends but is stuck with irritating, car-obsessed coworkers. 

What Emily does have is a 300+ day streak on the New York Times Wordle. But one day, with only one guess left and no clue what the answer is, she’s forced to turn to one of her irritating, car-obsessed coworkers, John, for help—and in doing so, realizes that he might not be so irritating after all. 

As they make their way, word by word, toward a 365-day streak, Emily is drawn into a surprising romance that will take her outside of her comfort zone—and challenge everything she thought she knew about happiness, success, and love. 

my review

I came across this book on Libro.fm, and it was my first full audiobook of 2025. After seeing it, I started playing Wordle regularly before even starting the book.

I forgot how satisfying playing Wordle can be. After a few days, I spoke about it to my friends and it spread. Soon, my friends and I started playing it and sending each other our stats daily. It's a fun and cute game and I was excited to see it in the story.

A Five Letter Word For Love stars Emily, a 27-year-old living in a small town in Canada. She works as a receptionist in an auto shop and rents a really cute house. She's not satisfied with her life, though. She dreams of big things and her current job is just something to fill her time as she researches for her perfect dream job.

Right from the start, we can tell that Emily has her head stuck in the clouds. She's so stubborn about her "dream job" and "dream life" that she doesn't fully appreciate her current life and surroundings. She's a bit judgy about people who "settle" instead of striving for bigger things. She's sure that she has a different life waiting for her, as soon as she finds out what it is.

Meanwhile, she takes joy in small things. Especially Wordle. She has a 360+ day streak on Wordle and is excited for it every day. Emily grabs a cup of coffee in the mornings and settles down to play Wordle. If she's not able to figure it out quickly, she spends the day thinking about it until the answer strikes.

Life is only as complicated as you make it.

Emily is very optimistic which I liked. She's quite lost and is stuck in a random job while her friends from college seem to have moves spades ahead. She's still trying to figure out the direction she wants to go in in life. In the meantime, she appreciates the small things while seeing the potential in everything.

She's also an overthinker who will randomly dream 5 years into a new activity. She enjoys going to any kind of museum and dreams of the roles she can take in museums. She loves the home she rents and dreams of something else related to it. It was nice but after a while, I felt like yelling at her to choose something and stop dreaming about a hundred different lives in a week.

We understand where she's coming from and why she doesn't settle for a less-than-perfect dream over time. Her friends from college have very different lives and they stay barely in touch with each other. However, whenever she does talk to them, it's small talk and they somehow push their thoughts on the group. It's easy to understand that Emily feels lacking because she's not doing anything interesting while her friends are making big achievements.

Emily's fraying friendship with her college friends was a bit hard-hitting. Friendships that slowly die over time die in many different ways. Some days, it is them forgetting to respond to you and other days, it's them forgetting about the favour you asked from them despite them asking you favours all the time. Watching Emily try to remain friends with them despite them being shitty was sad.

People can change their natures, if they want it enough.

While I liked Emily's way of life in daily life, her inner monologue was something to bear through. According to the story, she's 27 years old and the story is set in the current day i.e. a few years after the pandemic. However, she thought like an old woman.

I don't mean to be mean but she thought like a 50-year-old woman. I'm 26 and despite not keeping up with the latest slang, I can easily say that we do NOT talk or think like her. Her favourite exclamation is "Good lord" and the audiobook narrator had a twang so Emily sounded like a Texan woman. She actually reminded me a LOT of Sheldon's mom in Young Sheldon. I hope that helps you understand what her monologue is like.

It would make more sense if the book was set 20 years prior. Some things would change like the existence of Instagram and smartphones etc. but most of the plot is on point with the old days.

I smile extra politely at her, because rude people never seem to know what to do in the face of excessive kindness.

Everything about Emily was partly nice and partly annoying. I liked that she was optimistic and nice to everyone but I didn't like how she sometimes used politeness to manipulate people. I liked that she dreamt big and didn't want to settle but I hated how she kept wavering between options.

I liked that she liked old people. She really enjoys hearing stories from elders and she likes spending time with them. It was nice that the book has a main character who takes care of elders instead of ignoring them. However, it was really hard for me to relate to her because she does nooot think like a 27-year-old in 2024/25.

I'm pretty sure that the only reason I continued with the book despite Emily's thought process was because it was good light entertainment during my commutes. I didn't have to pay a lot of attention and yet it made me listen a bit, even if it was just to roll my eyes at her antics.

“[12:47]: Wordle was trying to warn me about the future.
[12:48] JOHN: what if today’s answer is DEATH?
[12:49]: Speak well of me at my funeral.”

I really liked how Wordle was shown in this book. It captured the beauty of the game and why I like it too. It requires a bit of thinking but isn't too hard to figure out. Usually, I take about 5 minutes. If the word is hard, I take longer. But it's a low-energy game that makes us feel good.

Watching the tiles turn green is so satisfying. Emily does a tiny dance every time she gets the word and it accurately depicts what each of us feels. She finds joy in playing Wordle daily and likes other small joys from daily life.

Wordle is the game that brought her and John together, too. It was interesting to see the game used in a romance. They bonded over their first guesses, wondering aloud whether the word had a double letter, and had a bit of fun playing the game together every day.

It was interesting how Emily used her life as inspiration for Wordle's guesses every day. Her first guess is always based on something that's on the top of her mind. It's not a "smart" way to play the game but it's a fun way. She also felt like Wordle was based on her life because she found connections between the day's word and her life. "The answer was pants and I was wearing pants!" 😂

-but there’s no point in talking just for the sake of talking. If you have something to say, I want to hear it. But you don’t have to talk just to fill the silence.

John is a simple guy. He reminds me of what I hear about men in the older days, actually. He works in the same auto shop as Emily as a mechanic. He's passionate about race cars. When he first visited Emily's house, he asked all about the house's make which she didn't care about. He's good at building stuff.

In contrast to Emily's personality, John is laid back and a bit rude to people. He doesn't overthink like her but he also doesn't dream to do better. I don't have much to say about his personality or story because it wasn't interesting. He was a really passive person.

I didn't like how John's backstory wasn't given much of a limelight in the book. He's not a regular Canadian—his mom is Dominican and his family lived in France for a while. His story sounds so interesting but we barely heard about it. He simply states these facts and shrugs it off. I understand that's a part of his personality but I wish Emily asked more questions, at least to his parents if not him.

“Are you a bit insane?” 
“Little bit. But you love it.”

When the story starts, Emily and John have known each other for a good while already and they hate each other. They only saw the worst qualities in each other and were only barely cordial colleagues.

One day, Emily's car breaks down and John happens to pass by and helps her. She was also freaking out about losing her 300+ day Wordle streak and John helps her with it. She realizes that, hey, John plays Wordle! He has one redeeming quality.

After that, they slowly become friends and start dating a long time later. They had a slow relationship development. They worked up to spend just a few minutes together every day to play Wordle and then began talking about other things. They balanced each other because they're two very different people.

However. Their romance was a bit weird. I don't know what gave the vibe but it just felt weird at times and I was noooot into it.

𝐘𝐨𝐮'𝐥𝐥 𝐧𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐛𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐲 𝐢𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐭𝐨𝐨 𝐦𝐮𝐜𝐡.

I loved the supporting characters, especially Jim. Emily likes hanging out with older people and happens to start taking care of chores for them. Along the way, she becomes friends with them and learns from them. I liked them more than her, actually. They were way more fun.

The book's message about how we can do several things and be happy with it but we eventually have to choose one was nice. The author showed two different perspectives with Emily and John to show that either extreme is not good and we should aim for something but not everything.

The way Emily learnt the message was fine but I didn't find the plotline realistic at all.

SPOILER ALERT!

Listen. I know this book is fictitious. The characters may move the moon. However, this book is almost realistic until we reach 2/3rds of the book. And what happened just did not fit in with the story.

Emily did a chemical engineering degree in college but didn't get a job in that field. She's in the auto shop as a temp job until she finds her "dream". She volunteers at a local barrel museum and likes it so she randomly applies to a museum course in NYU and for an internship at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. And she gets accepted to both! HOW?

She's a Canadian girl with minimal experience in the field and no credentials to her name. You're telling me that she got accepted to both places? This convinced me that the story is not meant to be in 2024 because even people with high credentials and scores don't get into both. The world is too competitive for that, sorry.

As someone who studied at a Tier 3 college for engineering and still struggles to get good jobs, I don't buy this story. Maybe I'm a bit too Asian to believe this. And the fact that she left the opportunities to go back to the small town and John??? At TWENTY SEVEN when she finally got the chance to chase her dream?? Oh hell no. Again, maybe I'm too Asian to agree with that choice. I'd have figured out a way to have both instead of quitting at both the Met and NYU. Man, I'm so annoyed that she randomly got into prestigious places after fiddling with her life for years and that she quit it. I understood what it was for but I didn't like it.

So. Yeah. Other than that brief adventure in New York, the plot was fine.

overall

The story was nice but not great. It was light entertainment during my commute. I got back to playing Wordle regularly because of it. But it's not a book that stands out or that I will remember for a long time.

Do I recommend it? I honestly don't know. I don't think this story would be well-liked by people around my age. It would have been nice if it was executed well to match the time it's set in. But it wasn't. Pick it up if you're interested in the story but I can't guarantee that you'll like it.

But I would recommend any of these romance books over A Five-Letter Word for Love any day.

chat with me!

Do you play Wordle? Is there a game that you play regularly and that brought you and your friends closer?