LOVE LETTERING

A quirky romance between a New York City woman famous for her lovely hand-lettering and the Wall Street mathematician who discovers the secret messages she embeds in her work.

Meg, an Instagram-famous hand-letterer and calligrapher, couldn’t resist embedding a hidden code in the wedding program of society bride Avery and her handsome but taciturn groom, Reid. When the wedding is cancelled, Reid, a quantitative analyst who discovered Meg’s message (“M-I-S-T-A-K-E”), seeks her out. Reid knows the breakup was for the best, but it brings home how lost and out of place he feels in New York. For her part, Meg has been experiencing artist’s block as she prepares to compete for a contract with a major retail chain to feature her work in their stationery line. She invites Reid to walk the streets of the city with her, looking for meaning in the words and letters around them. As their romance heats up, Reid has to contend with some major conflict at work, and Meg is coping with the demands of a new celebrity client and the increasing distance of her best friend and roommate, Sibby. Clayborn’s (Best of Luck, 2018, etc.) depiction of the artistry of hand-lettering and the worlds that letters open up for Meg is fascinating. Letters and signs organize Meg’s experience: “L-I-K-E, after all, is a word I’ve been turning over and over a lot in my head over these last two weeks, trying to absorb it into my being, trying to keep it from becoming something else.” Meg’s dry observations are hilarious (her drink is a “defibrillator in a cup”), and even readers familiar with New York will see the city in a new light, through its signs and symbols. Reid and Meg are wonderfully unique, and their romance carves a sweet, winding, and sexy path to self-acceptance and mutual affirmation.

Fresh, funny, clever, and deeply satisfying.