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I put off writing a review for Love Lettering because I have so many mixed feelings about the book. I love the art of hand lettering and calligraphy, but I sometimes found the minute focus on the process and different styles (which I obsessed over while reading the text!) distracted my attention from the love story. When I wasn’t wholly distracted because I was visualizing letters and fonts and serifs and sans serifs, I loved this quietly charming – and slightly magical – opposites attract romance.
Meg Mackworth was mostly content working at an upscale paperie, creating beautiful custom hand-lettered stationery, journals and planners for its elite clientele. But then word about her talent spread like wildfire over social media, and her once quiet life became a distant memory. As Love Lettering begins, Meg – dubbed The Planner of Park Slope – is struggling to enjoy her success. She’s lost her creative spark just as an important deadline for a hand lettered journal showcasing her innovative style looms, and she’s panicking. Overwhelmed by the pressures of fame, her work feels forced and uninspired. Meanwhile, she can’t talk to her best friend and roommate about any of it because they’re barely on speaking terms (and she doesn’t know why), and Meg is still trying to shake off a sense of guilt about the hidden message she left in a client’s wedding invitation forecasting the demise of the relationship. She’s mostly convinced herself that no one will ever spot it, but if they do, it will spell disaster for her burgeoning career. Worry and doubts are her constant companions, and she’s certain things can’t get worse… until they do. Reid Sutherland, the gorgeous fiancée of her former client – the client whose invitation contained the hidden word – enters the shop. Stunned and wary, Meg’s initial reaction is to hide. And then she notices he isn’t wearing a wedding ring.
Reid Sutherland is a financial analyst with a talent for spotting patterns – which is how he spotted Meg’s hidden word in the wedding invitation. Although Reid called off the wedding for many reasons – not the least of which was because a total stranger knew it was a mistake – he wants and needs to know how the artist knew the relationship was destined to fail. When Reid walks in the door of the shop and spots Meg, he’s curious and angry and anxious, exhausted by New York City and his job, and desperate for answers from the unassuming woman who made him think twice about his meticulously planned life.
Meg and Reid are a study in contrasts, and as usual, Ms. Clayborn – via the first person PoV of Meg – slowly reveals the hidden depths and quirks of her characters as they reveal themselves to each other. (This author knows women and articulates their insecurities, their doubts, their strengths, their secret selves so clearly… they are women I know and understand.). After an alternately awkward, tense and antagonistic conversation with Reid in the shop, he leaves – but neither he nor Meg experiences a sense of closure afterward. Later, Meg obsessively replays the conversation, and in a pseudo-penitent act, she challenges herself to help Reid fall in love with New York City.
As Love Lettering slowly, quietly unfurls, Reid and Meg awkwardly – painfully, really – discover more and more reasons to spend time together, and more and more reasons to like each other. Each ‘scavenger hunt,’ is like a marvelously, intricately crafted short story within the greater novel, and as they roam across the city finding NYC’s secret places and hidden treasures, they also find them in each other. Their conversations are witty and sharp and difficult and lovely, and watching the author’s characters fall in love is such a wondrous experience. I can’t think of any other author who so perfectly captures those scary wonderful feelings of falling in love. Eventually, the slow simmering heat between Meg and Reid reaches a boiling point, and their friendship gives way to a sexy, passionate affair. Their happiness casts something of a magical, soft focus glow over the whole novel, and it’s all amazingly well done… so it’s a bit of a shock when the story takes an abrupt twist. Honestly reader, the clues are all there, but I was surprised nonetheless.
The affair with Reid helps Meg to find new inspiration for her work, and confidence in herself. She challenges her roommate to be honest about their estrangement (I confess, I didn’t love this character), and nurtures a new friendship with a client on her own journey of self-discovery. Reid, as I mentioned earlier, remains something of an enigma – to the reader, and to Meg. Reader, he’s lovely, but intense and oh, so tightly wound. It’s a delight to watch him enjoy Meg, and to sometimes relax and let his guard down. He’s complicated, and so is his life – well, at least the part he allows Meg (and us) to see.
So let me circle back to one of my biggest challenges grading this book. I love hand lettering, calligraphy, typography, branding… truly, I’m obsessed with it, which was a mixed blessing reading Love Lettering. I geeked out when I read the blurb and saw the cover. I looked forward to hearing about Meg and her career and her art. And then I started reading and obsessing. I couldn’t turn my brain off trying to imagine the letters and styles and fonts… and ended up wholly diverted from the story! I suspect the majority of readers will not have this experience, and all the letter talk will serve more as a background to the story. Unfortunately, for me, it was its own special kind of torture!
Based on the aforementioned challenges I experienced reading this book – and my complete and total inability to detach the lettering references from the actual story (UGH!) – my grade is something of a compromise. Love Lettering is a love letter to romance, New York City, and hand lettering. Lush and lovely, it’s sure to please fans of contemporary romance.
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Grade: A-
Book Type: Contemporary Romance
Sensuality: Warm
Review Date: 30/12/19
Publication Date: 12/2019
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.
I love romance novels - all kinds.
I love music - some kinds.
I have strong opinions about both and I like to share them.
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Definitely sliding this on my TBR pile.
I had an arc of this book and Lucy Parker’s Headliners and both were just fabulous. Unfortunately, they were also both the two books I was most looking forward to reading in 2020, and now I’m in a reading funk because I can’t shake the feeling nothing can top them in the new year. I know in my head that’s silly, but still. I think it would be nice maybe in January to have a blog on what everyone is most looking forward to reading in the new year.
@Blackjack: I’ve always found the best way to avoid a book hangover is to jump right in to another book. I already have 13 books on my January tbr—all of them from favorite authors, including Caitlin Crews, Jackie Ashenden, Eve Dangerfield (two books scheduled for January release), Molly O’Keefe, Skye Warren, Natasha Knight, and Sybil Bartel. All I can say is I’m thankful my family knows that money (or gift cards) to purchase books is always my go-to Christmas gift!
I work as a technical writer, so I do deal with fonts (but not to the extent of calligraphers), so I really enjoyed the description of the fonts (enough to make it interesting, not so much that I was bored). It didn’t bother me – instead I just enjoyed it and really liked a heroine with a different and interesting career (and something you don’t see often in romance novels). And I found myself looking at signs and fonts a little differently.
And I really liked Reid, though for some reason, I kept picturing Benedict Cumberbatch as Reid. Not a bad association!
Sometimes you want fluffy and sometimes you want something more – something with some depth to it. This book definitely gives you more. One of the few books I read this year that after I finished, I wanted to go back and start reading it again.
Not exactly “I’m on a bus in Portugal” (hope you have a great time; I’ve only heard wonderful things), but I went to Japan in September and when I turned my phone on as I walked off the plane in Osaka, I found a voicemail from a neighbor back home in DC telling me that I had to move my car by 12 M or it would be towed as the street was to be repaved. Needless to say, I couldn’t exactly fly back to move it so was in a bit of a panic, but when I called her back she said the problem was solved. It took my tenant, a phone call to my son in NY to tell her where the car key was, and then a search among the neighbors to find someone who could drive a stick shift, but the car had been moved and I was spared the fines and storage fees – which would have been considerable since I was away for a month.
Y’all are making me laugh! I am in Portugal. I’m also traveling with my husband and 2 boys (10/13). So, I’d love to pretend I’m super fancy and European…but we’re more like the Griswold’s.
I thought of two other books while I read your review, neither of which seems to really be anything like LOVE LETTERING, but my brain tends to connect disparate items. The first book is Anne Calhoun’s THE LIST which has a heroine who owns a very upscale stationery shop in Manhattan and understands the value of the hand-written and personalized. The second book is Vi Keeland & Penelope Ward’s HATE NOTES, where the plot is set in motion when the heroine finds a love note in the hem of a wedding dress (for a wedding that never took place) at a consignment shop. (The hero’s name in HATE NOTES is also Reid, which seems to currently be a name du jour in Romancelandia.)
Btw, “I’m on a bus in Portugal” is my new favorite “I can’t get back to you right now” phrase!
@DDD – I texted my lake neighbor this summer to let her know that a large tree had fallen across the drive leading to her house. She texted me back “Thanks, however I am on a cruise ship on the Adriatic at the moment.”
I thought a little about Calhoun’s The List when reading Love Lettering, since stationary and calligraphy are shared topics in both books. In that respect, there are some similarities. Clayborn spends quite a bit more time on the art of calligraphy, though I do remember some of that in The List as well. The List is my favorite of Calhoun’s books, and so maybe I gravitate to this topic in books!
I’m on a bus in Portugal so I can’t comment like I want to – but yes to all of the above & I wish I wasn’t so distracted by the lettering. But. I was. :) !
I adore Portugal so have a lovely time!!
Lovely review, Em! I freakin’ adore this book and since it technically comes in on the 31st of this month, it displaces all other novels for 2019 for me and is now my official favorite book of the year. Reid is incredible and I loved unraveling the mystery of him, just as the heroine tries to understand him. I lived in Manhattan when I was younger and empathize with his exhaustion living in the city and with Meg’s excitement over it too. It’s a love/hate thing. The sexual encounters in this book…oh my gosh. And the romance is breathtaking. Clayborn’s respect and kindness to women means so much to me, and that she allows female friendship to be so complicated and messy and essential to one’s well-being is a wonderful thing. Far too many romance writers portray female friendship in syrupy, one-dimensional ways, and Clayborn provides the perfect anecdote.
I share some of your feelings about the distraction of the calligraphy, I think. Like you, I stopped any number of times while reading this book to Google fonts. I even looked up a brand of calligraphy pens Clayborn mentions, and I actually ended up buying a set for my niece for Christmas. I’ve noticed that when I read Clayborn, I get caught up in the details of her characters’ passions. In her first book, I kept looking up antique cabinet door knobs while the heroine and hero restore an old home. But, I think maybe where I diverge from you a little is that it doesn’t bother me to look up as I read. In fact, as an academic it’s familiar territory to read always with pencil and paper and stop and take notes or do quick research. This book is beautifully written and wonderfully evocative, but I would say that it’s not an easy or quick read and may work best to read in slow segments. That style may not appeal to some readers, but I hope readers do approach this one with patience because the payoff is so worth it.