4.5 stars. This is one of those books that starts slow, but all of a sudden, you’re super into it and racing to finish. Love Lettering is as gorgeously written as I imagine main character Meg Mackworth’s hand lettering is - it’s fresh and different in it’s treatment of a character who is protective of herself and doesn’t have a ton of friends. It’s also incredibly original in creating a hero who feels period-piece romantic, but also very real.

Meg Mackworth is a hand letterer who has come into a bit of fame. As The Planner of Park Slope, she’s developed a custom hand-letters journal business that keeps her in her Brooklyn apartment, but now, she’s faced with a huge opportunity that is even more exciting and lucrative. The problem? She’s got an artistic block and a real fear of failure. Added to the fact that her best friend and roommate is becoming more distant and moving out, and Meg’s feeling a little vulnerable. Enter Reid Sutherland, a former client who comes in demanding to know why Meg left a hidden message in his wedding program - for a wedding that didnt happen. Reid is handsome, stoic, and burned by his break-up and by New York City - and Meg is part of that. Spontaneously realizing they both need a friend, Meg invites Reid to come with her on some city walks to help inspire her work and help Reid realize what there is to love about New York.

What starts as an achingly slow burn becomes a story of honesty, friendship, love of NY, fighting to keep the people you love and making choices. I really loved it. Yes, Love Lettering is a romance - and an esoteric one at that - but I could see people who read straight women’s fiction loving it too - the beauty is in the details of the way Meg and Reid first meet, Meg’s way of looking at the world, and how it compares to mathematician Reid’s world view. Also, ALL THE NYC STUFF. If you’ve lived in New York or just love the city, you’ll love the way it almost plays it’s own character in the book as the characters struggle to find their way. It’s not just a setting.

The push and pull is so great and cute and unique for all the characters. As a reader, I was practically begging Meg and Reid to get to the actual romance, but the writer in me appreciates just how much author Kate Clayborn pulled off here. Meg and Reid don’t live in a bubble and they both have friendships, relationships and work lives that bleed into their story, and it just feels so full and true.

Love Lettering is a winner if you’re into anything paper crafty or journal-ish and even more if you’re into romances that really develop and hold their cards close. I know I’ll be reading this one again and possibly even buying a hard copy for my shelf. This one is a keeper, guys.

5 hard-won stars!

This was my first read by Kate Clayborn and I loved it!

I'll admit, I almost dnf'd the book at around 10% because it takes a while to get into the head of our main character, Meg. Her tendency to see patterns in words all around her was a bit distracting to begin with, but it actually was one of the highlights for me by the end of the book.

The way that Meg and Reid connected with each other by seeing signs and patterns in the world (and most notably his wedding invitation) made for a unique love story! Meg was uninspired in her work, and fearful of her tendency to hide messages for the unsuspecting client. By playing games with the button-up Reid, Meg found a new kind of inspiration both in her professional and personal life.

I really felt for Meg. Her intense loneliness was heartbreaking and watching her grow and open up to those around her was immensely satisfying. A beautiful love story!

Meg is a hand-letterer and calligrapher in high demand for her stationery, planners, and wedding invitations, but she has the unfortunate knack of putting her feelings about the customer in her work. When a groom shows back up a year later wanting to know how she knew his wedding would be a mistake, she swears off the coded messages and insights she can't control. Except now that Reid wants to know more about her, she finds herself desperate to learn more about this mathematician who hates New York but somehow seems to understand her.

This was a really cute story, and I loved the writing. There were a few too many details about calligraphy and fonts that I didn't entirely understand, but they added an interesting dimension to the characters because each is described with certain letter styles. This was a great debut by Kate Clayborn, and I'll be sure to check out more of her work in the future!

Recently I've become really interested in hand-lettering, so when I was browsing NetGalley and I saw a book named Love Lettering, I had to give it a go. It seemed like the perfect mix, a romance story centered around a woman who does lettering as her main job. I was caught from the beginning. But, this love story felt short for me. I feel like I was more interested in learning about Kate's business than in her relationship with Reid. For me a romance book has to focus its attention in the love story and not the side story of the characters. That's why I gave this book 3 stars.

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.

When I read a sample of LOVE LETTERING a while ago, I knew I had to have this book. Kate Clayborn is a new-to-me author but what jumped right at me was her insane talent to bring multi-faceted characters to life over the course of a couple of pages and from a single point of view. I was so intrigued that I wanted to see if the rest of the story would be able to fulfill the promise.

Meg's whole thought process is built around letters. As a hand-lettering artist that's not surprising but it may distract you at first since she uses graphic design jargon. Fear not, it's not rocket science and if you know a little about fonts this will be fun because visualizing the things Meg saw in her mind became my favorite past time while reading this book. So heads up - this may start out a little slower for some readers.

Meg and Reid are like Yin and Yang. Coffee and milk. Gin and Tonic. Ice cream and cone. You get the gist. Total opposites but perfect for one another. While Meg's creative, loyal and sweet character is being revealed through her thoughts, Reid's needs to be uncovered one layer after another through Meg's experience with him. To him numbers are what letters are to Meg, and if you thought you've read about multi-layered characters, try Reid Sutherland. At the beginning he comes across a bit stuffy, formal sometimes even a little rude and a lot sad but the deeper you get to know him the more his softer, more romantic and playful side becomes apparent. There is an unexpected sweetness to him that just had me fall head over heels for him.
I know that I could have my eyes closed this way and I’d still know Reid’s kiss anywhere, because Reid’s kiss is everything I like about Reid—firm and direct, with a sweetness you have to know to truly recognize.

Meg loves New York as much as Reid hates it. Together they discover the city from a completely different point of view by inventing games they play on their strolls together. And this is where the magic happens - I loved how Meg reflects on everything she does, how willing Reid is to learn Meg's language and how they obviously make each other happy. How Meg, who shies away from conflict in the beginning learns how to confront issues straight on. How this reserved man opens up to her and finds delight and love for the city he couldn't wait to leave in the beginning.

“You’re the best part of this city,” he whispers...

There is no point in the story where you can point at and say that they fell in love right there and then. It's a gradual, slow burn that will have you giddy for all their firsts.

LOVE LETTERING is a clever, beautifully written story that shines and sparkles brilliantly and has so much depth and a lot of sweetness that never gets cloying. I enjoyed the development of Reid and Meg's relationship, the friendships that are an integral part of Meg's life and the twist towards the end, that took me by surprise. This book made me happy, so happy that I went and bought the audiobook. I'll be checking out Kate Clayborn's backlist!
It feels like floating, like being untethered. Like writing without letters. Like counting without numbers. It feels like love.

A bittersweet and swoony contemporary romance with Clayborn's trademark gorgeous prose and a gloriously-lived-in New York serving as the third lead. A love letter to romance, lettering, and the city by turns, LOVE LETTERING is a must-read for fans of Clayborn's previous work and a fantastic starting point for new-to-the-author readers.

Thanks to @netgalley and @kensingtonbooks for my free ebook. Ok so onto the book, this was one that I had to warm up to. The first few chapters were not my favorite since the author put a lot of emphasis on fonts the first few chapters. A few more chapters in and I was able to appreciate the font talk and how she used them to describe how she was feeling and how each font was unique. As I kept reading I was able to really enjoy this slow burn romance.
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Meg is popular because of her hand lettering and Reid happens to be an ex client of hers after she did his wedding invitations. Yup, you read that right! Not only did he not end up getting married but he ends up going to see Meg a year later so she can explain her hidden message she left on the invitation. This ends being the beginning of a rocky friendship that ends up developing into something more. What I loved was how they did scavenger hunts using signs/letters in the city. This allowed them to stop and appreciate what was around them and also get to know each other. Meg is all about letters and fonts while Reid is all about numbers.
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It did take a turn I wasn’t expecting but I think for the most part it ended working for me. Overall, this was a slow start for me but by the end of the book I ended up enjoying this love story.

Ok, so I liked Love Lettering and thought it was really well written, but I didn’t love it, and I think a lot of that is because of my personal preferences. I prefer stories with dual narration, which this didn’t have, and as a result, I didn’t feel like I really got to know Reid all that well. That’s not necessarily a deal breaker, as there are other single POV romances that I’ve loved, but for some reason, I didn’t jive with Meg’s voice. This book took a really long time to get started for me, and while I loved seeing Meg develop friendships with some of her coworkers and clients (and Reid, of course!), I didn’t love how long it took for some of that to get started. Reid really wasn’t a main character for a lot of the first part of the book, and I disliked all of the hints about something going on with her best friend, but never saying exactly what. Honestly, the whole thing felt a little more women’s fiction-y to me than I typically prefer, which I think is a large part of why this book didn’t work for me. But I can’t say what I would have liked better! I do think this was incredibly well written and does an excellent job showing Meg’s character arc, so if this book has at all caught your eye, I think you’re in good hands! It just wasn’t my favorite.

One of the things that draws me to contemporary romance books is the careers of the main characters. I especially loved reading this book about main character Meg Mackworth, who is a typographer/calligrapher! What a cool job! As someone who is currently trying to start my own bullet journal and is working on hand lettering as a hobby, this book was extra fun from that standpoint.

As for other aspects of the book, I thought the pacing and the plot were really pretty good. I liked that Reid was a nerd but also very down to earth and realistic I felt. I really appreciated him after the last male MC I read. Meg was pretty funny in her crisis but I will say that with the story being told from her POV it made the story a little one-sided.

After loving Clayborn's Chance of a Lifetime series (https://www.soobsessedwith.com/2019/12/quick-lit-october-2019.html), I was thrilled to get a copy of this book for review! I expected to love it immediately, but it took me quite a while to find my footing with the story. The characters felt stiff, and I had a hard time getting a read on them. I didn't understand why they were continuing to spend time together when their interactions were so awkward! The heroine was a hand letterer who made custom planners for her wealthy clientele, an aspect I thought I'd love since I'm a paper nerd. Instead, it felt overly detailed to me. There was just a little too much time spent talking about typography. The pacing was uneven, and I wasn't as invested as I'd hoped to be. I So Liked It (3.5 stars) by the end, but it wasn't a memorable read for me.

The book for me is slow in some parts. It eventually picks up.
Meg meets Reid when she was creating his wedding invitations. She puts in a hidden message in them.
He comes back - not married - and wants to know why she did it.
Their story takes them on a scavenger hunt thru New York City looking at signs.
Thanks to NetGalley and Kensington for the ARC. This is my honest opinion.

I was so excited to read Love Lettering that I was almost a little afraid to read it. For weeks, I had seen and heard some of my favorite romance book bloggers/podcasters enthuse about Kate Clayborn’s new novel, praising its plot, its characters, its descriptions of New York City. With a buildup like that, I feared, it was more than likely that the book would be a letdown; there was no possible way it could meet my expectations.

I was especially wary because I had read Clayborn’s “Best of Luck” series earlier in 2019 and found it … fine. Fun, light, easy to read—perfectly competent two-point-five star books that I finished quickly and just as quickly forgot. I was initially a little surprised that Love Lettering was getting such strong advance reviews, but the more I heard about the book the more it piqued my interest. And then, magically, it showed up in my NetGalley queue, auto-approved for me like an early Christmas gift by some generous publicity staffer at Kensington Books.

In one week, I’ve read Love Lettering twice: once quickly, a marathon binge that extended late into the night as I soaked up Clayborn’s plot, her characters, her descriptions of New York; the second time slowly, over three separate days, as I absorbed the story and spotted the clues to its twist that I had thoughtlessly passed over the first time. This is a book that absolutely must be read more than once, because it’s not a straightforward romance; it’s a thick, tangled knot of relationships (with friends, with business colleagues, and, yes, with a guy) that narrator Meg has to unravel and rework.

As many other reviewers have noted, Love Lettering will likely make you look at signs and scripts with new eyes. Meg, a professional hand-letterer, finds inspiration on the streets of New York, snapping photos of unique fonts that she can draw from in her work. Meg also tends to think in signs and fonts, her imagination conjuring up special designs for significant words. Like many other readers, I would love to see an illustrated version or graphic novel of Love Lettering in the future. (Though this book also inspired a fresh wave of despair over my own cramped print/scrawl.)

Since the book is told from Meg’s perspective, it’s a little bit harder to see how events affect Reid, the male protagonist. One of my favorite realizations at the end was that there are good reasons for Reid to be reserved and guarded. It’s his personality, to a certain extent, but it’s also due to other events that have to play out before he can work on really being with Meg. Both of them grow and change throughout the book, as they learn from each other and from their relationship, and on my second read I definitely saw those small moments of transformation more clearly. It’s not about becoming someone new to please a partner; it’s working together through tough times, even when it’s tempting to run, each person emerging from them stronger and more fully realized, both individually and together.

In sum (to use a math pun that would make Reid groan), I had no reason to fear: Love Lettering was indeed one of the best romances I’ve read in a long time. It’s a quiet, slow book about the power of two lonely people coming together to navigate the world as a partnership, looking for signs and learning to read the codes that they unlock in each other.

‪One of the things I felt so connected to was the honesty of the main character, Meg, and her loneliness...the ache of loneliness, despite her current professional success. I’m about to start what should be a dream job in a new town, and I relate to this ache. ‬

‪The story is also a love letter to New York. The way the city is written feels so intimate and accurate and I can smell, and taste, and hear, and see everything so clearly. Leaving NY in December left me broken-hearted and this book was like a balm‬.

‪It gave me permission to be creatively blocked and hope that I won’t remain this way for long. That the world around us offers inspiration and I need to get out there and find it. Also, I need to take more walks! (Even in LA!)‬

‪I learned that I am a lot like the main character, Meg. I retreat from conflict and run when things get heated. I want to learn to fight...fight for things worth keeping and staying for. It’s ok, in fact, often necessary, to FIGHT for and with those you love. ‬

‪And...I’ll just put it out there........REID is the sexiest character I’ve read in so long. Integrity is sexy. Honesty is sexy. Saying I’m sorry is sexy. Consent is sexy. Numbers are sexy. Masterpiece Theater is sexy. Whoooo wheeee...this guy... *fans self*‬

‪In closing, this thread is my love letter to LOVE LETTERING. ❤️❤️❤️ I’ve read it twice now and both times I want to hug my kindle and scream at @kateclayborn for being so amazing and talent. :)

I actually read this months ago but just waited to talk about it. I didn’t love this book. It was a good but not great read for me. It felt more like women’s fiction, but that is fine with me because I enjoy WF too. There was a lot of emphasis on the Meg’s work and it felt like too much at times. There is a subplot where Meg and her roommate/former best friend work on repairing their relationship but it also felt like this was a more important relationship to Meg than the romantic one with Reid. And I am not opposed to that, female friendships are incredibly important and I wish that we as a culture talked more about healing from broken friendships. All that to say, this book was fine but was missing something for me as a reader. Something that I find hard to describe. I think if you’ve read and enjoyed Kate’s previous books, you will enjoy this one as well.

I found myself relating so much to the romantic relationship in this book, to the point where it almost became too painful to read and I had to put the book down a few times. I loved the quiet moments between the characters, how they noticed the little nuances about each other, and found common ground despite coming from different backgrounds. The elaborate but never gratuitous descriptions of the hand-lettered signs, the way New York City was a character in itself, and the delightful supporting characters all gave me so much joy. I would definitely recommend this book for fans of NYC, creative types, and anyone who can relate to feeling blocked or feels like they're always "going along" with other people's plans in life.

This book was so enjoyable and fun. It was unpredictable and unique and I really enjoyed reading it.

I loved this book. I remember when the Apple Macintosh introduced a variety of fonts and how those fonts could represent how one felt when writing. Well, Meg, has turned her artistry and calligraphy into a full-time job in New York City. She’s known as the Planner of Park Slope designing wedding forms and planners. Giving up the wedding business when her intuition accidently hides the word “mistake” in the program, she is confronted by the ex-groom. She can’t get Reid out of her mind. The two of them seem to clash, and yet this fun New York City romance takes shape as Meg slowly becomes surer of herself and what she wants. I’m seldom a fan of romance, but this was one of the few I really enjoyed reading.

Strong writing and a unique career and story-line for the heroine, Meg [and hero, Reid, for that matter] makes this book a standout. I really enjoyed the originality and characters in this one. The growth of Meg throughout the story was believable and well done. The pacing of the romance was a nice steady slow-burn. A great way to start 2020, definitely recommended for contemporary romance readers.

This love story of a lettering artist and a financial numbers analyst is one of the strongest contemporary romances I’ve seen this year.
Meg is supposed to be hand-lettering Reid Sutherland’s wedding program. She’s *not* supposed to be slipping in secret messages about how she thinks the match is doomed. And Reid’s *definitely* not supposed to pick up on those, call off the wedding, and one year later show up to ask Meg what the hell she’s up to. It’s an excruciatingly awkward beginning, which makes the richness of the emotional payoff all the more satisfying.
This is the first Kate Clayborn I’ve read. It won’t be the last—this book is utterly captivating, with a voice that leaps forward and then back on itself, like a series of curling loops inked a blank page. Dizzying, in the way of good champagne.
A new year is a blank page, too, and this story has so much to say about blank pages. Planners, agendas, weddings, fresh starts, new relationships, creative blocks, new upheavals in old relationships—what words and pictures and numbers we use to fill the spaces in our lives. To draw connections where once was nothing. Friendships, romances, family, the relationship with one’s own self. It’s a bit like New York, to which this book is very much a love letter: the epic shapes you see from faraway are full of secret details and revelations when you go look up close.
Highly recommended for anyone who has strong opinions about secret codes, typefaces, planners, or pens.