In The Words We Lost by Nicole Deese, Ingrid Erikson moved to western Washington state with her father and became friends with cousins Cece and Joel Campbell when they were all teenagers.
Cece grew up to write a novel, which Ingrid, as an intern at a publishing house, sneaked to her editor. The editor loved the manuscript, bought it, and Cece’s series became runaway best-sellers.
But then Cece tragically died on the operating table during surgery to remove a brain tumor.
Besides losing Cece, Ingrid’s father died several years before. Ingrid blamed Joel and broke contact with him. So she lost all the people and the place she loved most and moved hundreds of miles away.
Ingrid is now a senior acquisitions editor, but she has a hard time functioning due to her grief. She relies heavily on her own intern, Chip. But her new boss can see she’s faltering.
Then Joel suddenly shows up unannounced. The family lawyer discovered a sealed letter addressed to him and Ingrid from Cece. She wanted them to come back home together to retrieve a package.
Ingrid’s boss gives her an ultimatum: find the rumored missing fourth manuscript to Cece’s series, or lose her job.
Ingrid isn’t sure she can go back to the area that she loves, but that brought her so much pain—and do so with Joel. But she doesn’t have a choice if she wants to keep her job.
I bought this book because I loved two of Nicole’s other books I had read. I got the audiobook at first, but the narrator just hit me wrong somehow. So I returned the book and got the Kindle version.
Then the first few pages held one of my pet peeves in writing. 🙂
But once we got past all that and I settled into the story, I loved it just as much as the others.
Some of the quotes I liked:
Success is a slow, long process of repetition (p. 90, Kindle version).
No heartache has ever gone unseen, and no darkness is ever too solid for light to overcome (p. 156).
God is often made visible by the hands and feet of the people He places in our lives (p. 177).
We can’t change the time we’ve spent, just how we choose to spend the time we have left (p. 228).
Even though there are still things to talk and sing and laugh about in this life, there are also things to miss and lament and grieve, too. Both are welcome and both are necessary (p. 367).
I enjoyed the depth of the characters and was pulled into their heartaches. The last few chapters unravel a bit of mystery. After the first few pages, I loved how the story developed and then concluded. I also loved the double meaning in the title. I’m happy to recommend this book to you.
Stray Thoughts 
I hadn’t heard about this novel and, like you, loved the other two by this author. Thanks for your quotes. My library has this so I’m looking forward to reading (and identifying what your writing pet peeve is).
I’d love to hear what you think about it. I thought about putting a P.S. about the writing pet peeve. 🙂 I have a few, but the one here is when someone is about to say something—often in a conversation, but here the character is about to give a presentation. But instead of speaking, the character muses inwardly for several paragraphs (seven in this case). I picture the listeners either frozen in space for a bit or waiting in uncomfortable silence for the speaker to continue. To me, that’s an unnatural space for the author to fill in explanation or backstory or description. Thankfully, I had the love of this author’s other books to keep me going and trusting that the book would be worth the effort, and it was.
As a reader, that can be a peeve for me, too — I’d lost track of where we were and what the context is. In audiobook format, this can be really hard if you’ve lost track of who’s speaking. But I’ve just gulped down this book as fast as I could. Of the four books I’ve read (Before I Called You Mine, All That Really Matters, All That It Takes, and this one), The Words We Lost ranks up there with the first Nicole Deese I’d read (All That Really Matters). I read the author’s comments at the end about debilitating effects of grief and made me think about the many widows I know who were so close to their husbands. It’s a hard topic in books, but I’ve appreciated how it was addressed in this story.
Oh this sounds good!! I will look for it at our library! Now i must know: what is your pet peeve regarding writing??!!
I thought about putting a P.S. about the writing pet peeve. 🙂 I have a few, but the one here is when someone is about to say something—often in a conversation, but here the character is about to give a presentation. But instead of speaking, the character muses inwardly for several paragraphs (seven in this case). I picture the listeners either frozen in space for a bit or waiting in uncomfortable silence for the speaker to continue. To me, that’s an unnatural space for the author to fill in explanation or backstory or description. The rest of the writing was wonderful.
haha oh yes that would bug me too!! I’d be like “just get to the point!”
Barbara, how good that you could keep on reading after being distracted on those first few pages. It’s amazing how sometimes we can fall in love with a book in the first paragraph … and other times after only a few pages we know it doesn’t have our name on it.
Thankfully I had the writer’s previous great books to go on to trust that the rest of the book would be good. And it was.
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