Written by Aatia Davison

Love languages really lend themselves to easy comprehension and translation. Do this, not that. With love languages, humanity’s most confounding emotion is magically reduced into five categories. Acts of Service, gifts, physical touch, quality time and words of affirmation.

Some would call this an oversimplification. In my experience, even love language skeptics, who call the idea a product of pop psychology, can’t really argue that not all acts of love are created equal. At the very least, not all acts of love function equally for the individual. Who hasn’t felt the sting of their thoughtful gesture going unappreciated? Or experienced the euphoria of having someone get it right?

So what’s your love language? And what books reflect your style? Keep reading to find out.

Acts of Service

Motherthing, Ainslie Hogarth

Meet Abby and Ralph. When Ralph’s mother, a formidable woman named Laura, takes her own life, her death haunts the young couple. Her death is especially hard for Abby—not for any love lost, Laura was vindictive and cruel toward her daughter-in-law, but because her death created a malevolent force which rippled through their lives. Abby works as a caretaker, and like her literary predecessors, Misery’s Annie Wilkes, she’s cunning and determined to exorcise the evil.

Italian American, Red Sauce Classics and New Essentials: A Cookbook, Angie Rito and Scott Tacinelli with Jamie Feldmar

This cookbook is the ultimate comfort read! The recipes, passed down and adapted over generations, are homey, hearty and so so good. What I love most is the reverence for the Italian American culinary tradition, with big colorful plates and loving dedications to the standard ‘red sauce,’ it is refreshing and unpretentious.

If acts of service are your thing, these irresistible recipes are perfect for dishing out to the ones you love.

Gifts

Happy Hour, Marlowe Granados

Calling all material girls! In Happy Hour, a novel about the exploits of twenty-somethings living in NYC, winning hearts is all about money and gifts. Crammed into a small Brooklyn sublet by day, the girls indulge in a fabulous nightlife in Manhattan, rubbing elbows with intellectuals, and the rich and famous. It’s escapism and crushing reality in a single narrative.

Physical Touch

Acts of Service, Lillian Fishman

This is one sexy book! Lillian Fishman’s 2022 novel about a young woman who falls into a complicated entanglement is all about touch. Physical touch and sex are a revelation for twenty-something year old Eve. She’s in loving relationship, but she is restless, sexually unfulfilled. She meets another woman, then a man, and the three of them start a relationship. Acts of Service, despite the name, is juicy, thoughtful literary fiction for physical touch-aligned readers.

Quality Time

Be Here To Love Me at the End of the World, Sasha Fletcher

In Be Here To Love Me at the End of the World a NYC couple are holed up in their NYC apartment at the end of the world. They make meals, worry over bills and see angels. The one-on-one time in these pages is an actual dream for those who value quality time.

Table For Two, Bre Graham

Light a candle and bring out the good plates with Table for Two. Making and (eating!) these recipes for your loved ones offers a perfect set-up for some one-on-one time.

Words of Affirmation

Heart Talk, Cleo Wade

Cleo Wade brings her positively-Instagrammable words of encouragement to Heart Talk. In these pages are daily pep talks and bursts of thought which read like loving chats with your best friend. Sometimes, all we need are kind words that which relay shared experience or understanding, and for some, speaking encouragement is the ultimate act of love.

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