Love Lettering - Review

Love Lettering

By: Kate Clayborn

Expected Publication: January 28th 2020 by Kensington Publishing Corp.

320 pages

Genre: Adult, Contemporary

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Goodreads description--In this warm and witty romance from acclaimed author Kate Clayborn, one little word puts one woman’s business—and her heart—in jeopardy . . .

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 . . .

The description for Love Lettering really pulled me in. I'm an avid lettering fan even if my personal skills aren't where I would like or where I used to be in years past. I will say that I was almost put off even reading the book description by the cover. It looks a bit like a self-published book to me. The elements of the cover are at least applicable to the story, but it definitely isn't my favorite cover. I actually first received what I thought was the book for review, but it turned out to be one of those pesky excepts. However, reading the first chapter of Love Lettering was enough to hook me.

I felt it was obvious that Kate Clayborn has first-hand knowledge and love of lettering just from reading this book. She could have simply done some research, but the way Meg thinks in word pictures is so well written that I wouldn't be surprised to find Kate Clayborn enjoys the hobby as well. Either way, this was well done in my opinion as a lettering fan. I do wonder if readers without the same knowledge or interest in lettering would enjoy it as much. Even the supplies Meg used were familiar to me.

Reid was a little harder for me to figure out. He's often misunderstood by others so it makes sense that he might feel the same way to the reader. So long as Meg understood him in a way that others might not makes their relationship more real and valuable. I liked that he had struggles going on that I didn't expect.

I do find that letters can be used too frequently in books to cover an information dump, and I somewhat felt that way over Reid's letter to Meg. It wasn't a huge issue and probably not something I would have noted had I not recently become frustrated with another author that I enjoy reading doing this a bit too frequently.

I really loved Sibby and Meg's conflict. It was easy to initially jump to disliking Sibby... even after finding out what her issues were. But I still enjoyed seeing how they played everything out.

Love Lettering was much better than I expected. I appreciated Kate Clayborn's knowledge of the art of lettering. I enjoyed the twists and relationship building. Love Lettering gets 4 Stars. Have you read Love Lettering? What did you think? Let me know!