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.

This book was so adorable, just as expected! I loved the unique approach to this contemporary romance by tying in calligraphy aspects. I loved seeing how Meg and Reid saw things and how creative Meg was. Kate Clayborn was able perfectly maintain the theme throughout the book and it made it that much better. This romance is a slow burn, friends to lovers, and it was worth the build-up!! I loved seeing little glimpses of Reid’s soft side and how much Meg grew throughout the book. Kate Clayborn beautifully tied in a lot of fun, impactful friendship elements into this book, making it way more than a romance novel. I genuinely felt like I learned things from this book and was able to view things from a different perspective, which I am really grateful for. If you’re looking for an adorable, whimsical, completely unique, slow-burn romance, or even just a good book about friendships and growth...go grab a copy of this book! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Thank you so much to Kensington Books for a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. I am so grateful!

This was such a fun original idea with a unique meet cute. Reid and Meg started out as near total strangers who built a tentative friendship despite being so different from one another. This made for a very slow burn where Meg slowly revealed subtle layers in Reid's personality, and also opened up to him as they spent more time together. I loved the descriptions of all the artistry with the lettering as I am always captivated watching someone who can pen a gorgeous word in one confident try. I'll definitely be more aware of the handwritten signs around me. This was a very nice read.

“Love Lettering” has a little bit of mystery weaved into a heartwarming romance. The romance between Meg and Reid was difficult and emotional at times but the way they worked through situations was always profound and thought-provoking. I often found myself asking if I would have done the same things.

It did have a bit of a slow start for me but I was turning pages soon enough once it grabbed me and never put it down after that.

I felt like I learned a lot about The “Lettering” profession, which I knew nothing of prior. It has definitely left a mark with me as I catch myself looking around at signs and writing.

This was my first Kate Clayborn novel and I am excited to read future works.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for fair and honest review.

I absolutely loved this book. I will admit that the very beginning of the book I was confused as Meg a talented hand writing artist described the thoughts in her head.

Meg has built a brand around her hand writing and she has a huge business opportunity but she is dragging around Brooklyn in a creative slump. While working at her friend's shop, she is surprised when a man from her past walks in, Ried. Over a year ago Meg worked for Reid and his fiance when she hand drew their wedding program. But she secretly hid the word MISTAKE between the letters.

Ried confronts Meg about the word. As he tells her how much he hates New York she decides to take a chance and ask Ried to help her with her creative block. Ried helps Meg by creating games that entice her letter love and his numbers love.

This book has it all! A beautiful creative romantic comedy with plot twists, drama and some unexpected action! I absolutely loved all the different ways this book took.

Oh, GOSH. Where to even start with how much I loved this book. Such a gorgeous story and it made me miss New York fiercely with its visual prose. I loved everything about Meg and Reid’s journey and the end was immensely satisfying, but the build to get to that point made me just as happy. This might be my favorite of Clayborn’s books yet.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.