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"Love" is a fitting title for a work plagued with complicated situations and complex characters. Toni Morrison is a poet in novelist form. Or maybe she’s a novel and a poet, in a way only Morrison can pull off. She has this inspiring ability to reflect humanity in a real, authentic way. It’s as if she watches us then writes what she sees. Her characters are so palpably human the reader has a difficult time separating the victims from the villains. All the players are both. She says of Mr. Cosey, the patriarch at the novel’s center, “You could call him a good bad man or a bad good man. Depends on what you hold dear—the what or the why. I tend to mix them” (200). Despite it’s overall intriguing-ness, "Love" does have its shortcomings. A seemingly prominent character by the name of L introduces the reader to Mr. Cosey, Heed, and Christine, but her personhood is never quite fleshed out. Flashback is sprinkled where Morrison needs it, but at moments the reader might find disorienting. If you aren’t a critical reader, or a seasoned Toni Morrison reader, "Love" may confuse and defeat you. It isn’t Toni Morrison’s best work, and maybe it wasn’t intended to be. However, it’s worth reading, even if only to grasp a few themes: one family’s history may become everyone’s history; anger and withholding swallow individuals whole; and love constitutes many different things.