Love Lettering by Kate Clayborn

Book Description

Meg Mackworth’s hand-lettering skill has made her famous as the Planner of Park Slope, designing beautiful custom journals for New York City’s elite. She has another skill too: reading signs that other people miss. Like the time she sat across from Reid Sutherland and his gorgeous fiancée, and knew their upcoming marriage was doomed to fail. Weaving a secret word into their wedding program was a little unprofessional, but she was sure no one else would spot it. She hadn’t counted on sharp-eyed, pattern-obsessed Reid…

A year later, Reid has tracked Meg down to find out — before he leaves New York for good — how she knew that his meticulously planned future was about to implode. But with a looming deadline, a fractured friendship, and a bad case of creative block, Meg doesn’t have time for Reid’s questions — unless he can help her find her missing inspiration. As they gradually open up to each other about their lives, work, and regrets, both try to ignore the fact that their unlikely connection is growing deeper. But the signs are there — irresistible, indisputable, urging Meg to heed the messages Reid is sending her, before it’s too late…

My Review

Drawn to careers which allow them to focus on the way their minds work, Meg is a freelance calligrapher, and Reid is a quantitative analyst. This book starts when they meet again, a year after Meg designed the wedding invitations for Reid’s wedding. It turned out that her letter focused brain had injected a subtle code into the invitations, and Reid’s analytical mind had noticed.

The author fills this text with extravagant description to beautifully describe how Meg sees the words that form her world. Their romance is a slow burn, and it leaves you wondering at points if these two closed-off people can possibly let someone else in.

I absolutely loved the excessive wordiness because of it’s role in the book, but had it not been a component of the way Meg’s different mind saw the world, I might have found it boring. Instead, it filled my own mind with visualization as the words came out. A good example of that is this:

“You hate New York,” I say.
“It’s growing on me.”
“I think you have to love it to stay.”

I see my words float up to the place where we’re both staring. It wouldn’t be difficult at all, to hide something in them. It’s all there, after all, everything I’m not really saying, everything I’ve been trying not to let myself think. The I, the LOVE, the YOU. The STAY.

If you can handle reading (or even enjoy) long descriptions of different types of font face and stretch yourself to try to get into the mind of people who think more visually, I think you can really enjoy this.

This contemporary romance / literary fiction was a real surprise standout for me. I’m going to start off by saying that this was ALMOST a five star read for me, but I really wanted more from Reid’s perspective. I didn’t want less from Meg, I enjoyed being in her head space and understanding her visual world, I just ALSO wanted Reid.

If you don’t like books about difficulties in communicating, you might need to give this one a little time to open up to you. As someone who struggles with those kinds of miscommunication tropes, this one was different because Meg and Reid are people who have struggles communicating in life. They both think very differently — Meg sees the world of words and emotional shapes form before her in individual letters and Reid sees the same world through the lens of numbers and patterns.

In the long run, both characters are sweet and lovable. The romance is cute and slow, and neither of them are super heroes or have magical power. They’re just a couple of odd birds who fall in love, and it’s worth your time.

Book Details

Title: Love Lettering
Author: Kate Clayborn
My Rating: 4/5 Stars
Published: December 31st 2019 by Kensington Publishing Corp.
ISBN: 9781496725172
Where: If you’d like to find out where the book is sold, please check Goodreads.

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