Book Review: "Love Lettering" by Kate Clayborn

Love Lettering was a slow-burn rom-com that snuck up on me and grabbed my heart!

First of all, I’ve got to say that this book wins for the most unusual professions of its main characters. Meg is a designer who specializes in hand lettering—she does in journals, planners, signs, cards, etc., and has even been called "The Planner of Park Slope"—and Reid is a quant, or quantitative analyst. (He’s a numbers guy in the finance world.)

Meg met Reid about a year ago when she was finishing up all of the printed material for his wedding. Something about that encounter and the dynamic between Reid and his fiancée compelled her to sneak a secret message of warning into their wedding program, amidst the frills, flowers, and fairies. No one will notice, right?

A year later Reid returns, and wants to know how Meg knew that his marriage was doomed to fail. (Of course he found the message. He finds patterns and signs every day.) Of course, Meg is most worried what Reid's discovery—and the possibility of him going public with it—could do to her career.

They couldn’t be more different from one another. But with a major deadline looming and her creativity blocked, Meg tries to enlist Reid into noticing the beauty of letters, fonts, and signs throughout New York City and Brooklyn. As the tension between them thaws, her creativity flows again.

But both are tightly wound, heavily guarded people, unwilling and unable to let the other in. And when a scandal erupts, both must decide whether signs point to a future together or apart.

"The point is...sometimes fighting isn't about leaving, it's about staying. It takes practice to get it right, and it's painful, but if you want to stay with people, you do it."

This book was enjoyable and unique in many ways, even as it followed the traditional rom-com patterns. I loved the juxtaposition between the creative and the analytical, and Meg and Reid's relationship really seemed believable. This one isn’t too steamy (one or two scenes but that’s it) but the whole story, and Kate Clayborn's storytelling, are just so appealing.