Narrated by Nicol Zanzarella
Kate Clayborn arrived on the contemporary romance scene a couple of years ago and made a big splash with her Chance of a Lifetime trilogy which featured three friends who won the lottery. She’s followed up that success with Love Lettering, a gorgeous slow-burn romance featuring a pair of truly likeable characters who, while complete opposites nonetheless complement each other perfectly.
Meg Mackworth has made a name for herself as a calligrapher and hand-letterer, producing beautiful custom-made journals, planners and stationery for the small, boutique paperie owned and run by a friend. But recently, her work has gained a wider audience and she has become something of an internet celebrity; her Instagram “how to” videos get hundreds of thousands of hits, she’s more in demand than ever, and she’s about to move her business to the next level by pitching a new range of designs to a company that will produce and distribute her work far more widely. So things are going well and life is good. Except… it isn’t. Meg is struggling to find inspiration, feeling that everything she is currently producing is trite and unimaginative, and with deadlines looming, she’s starting to panic. Once upon a time, she would have talked through her fears with her best friend and flatmate, Sibby, but something – Meg has no idea what – has gone badly wrong with their relationship and they’re barely talking let alone sharing on that level. Plus, she’s still feeling guilty about the hidden message she left in a client’s wedding stationery a year earlier, which spelled out the word M-I-S-T-A-K-E. She knows it was incredibly subtly done and is sure nobody could possibly have spotted it, but nonetheless, it was unprofessional and unprecedented and she still isn’t quite sure what prompted her to do it. So Meg isn’t in the best place when she looks up from her work one afternoon to find the fiancé of that client entering the shop – and is immediately worried that he’s come to berate her and make her indiscretion public.
Reid Sutherland has no intention of doing anything of the sort, but he does want answers. A mathematical genius and financial analyst, he’s used to seeing and interpreting patterns – which is how he spotted the coded word Meg thought she’d buried in the wedding programme. Reid tells Meg her lettering felt like a sign, and that he’d called off the wedding – not as a result of her “message”, but because he’d had his own doubts and concerns for some time; but he does want to know what prompted a perfect stranger to think he shouldn’t marry the woman he’d been engaged to. An uncomfortable, awkward conversation follows, during which Meg can’t help noticing that Reid seems extremely world-weary and tired. His intense dislike for New York surprises her, however, and for a few days afterwards, Meg finds herself replaying their talk over and over – and impulsively invites Reid to join her on a series of walks inspired by the city’s best hand-lettered signs. Maybe inspiration will strike them both; Meg’s creative spark will be re-ignited and Reid will be moved to revise his opinion of NYC.
These shared journeys are the starting point for a slowly moving, beautifully written and wonderfully romantic story about two people who, despite their differences, are made for each other. This is one of those times when it’s easy to see exactly why opposites attract; her fancifulness versus his analytical nature; her warmth and easy-going nature versus his reserve; her affinity for seeing the world around her in a mixture of cursives and curlicues and serifs versus his way of making sense of the world through numbers – yet together, they’re a perfect fit.
Meg and Reid are likeable, relatable characters, and their friendship develops and then grows into something more in a way that feels organic and utterly right. The story is told entirely from Meg’s PoV (for reasons which become clear later in the book) and I liked her a lot. She’s charming and imaginative and quirky, but not exactly brimming with confidence despite her success, and I loved seeing her learn – with Reid’s help – to confront some of the difficulties she’s been avoiding and take control of her life. But Reid – oh, be still my beating heart – Reid is a hero to die for. When we first meet him, he seems dull and standoffish (Meg thinks of him in terms of Masterpiece Theatre, by which I’m inferring she means he’s like a character in a period drama), but as she gets to know him, she discovers an unexpected sweetness and a playful, romantic side to him that are worthy of All The Swoons. He’s a complex character – genius-level clever, observant and direct (sometimes to the point of brutal honesty), he’s also lonely, tired, stressed and obviously very troubled, weighed down by burdens that are, as far as Meg can tell, connected to his job, and are the likely cause of his dislike of New York and his eagerness to leave. The truth, when revealed, comes as quite a shock and heralds a change of pace and tone for the book which works really well, heightening the tension and making the angst and drama that unfolds feel more authentic and not as though the author felt she had to insert some last minute roadblock on the path of true love.
I enjoyed listening to Meg and Reid as they started orbiting each other in ever-decreasing circles – and I also enjoyed Meg’s relationships with other characters in the book; her former employer Cecelia, colleague Lachelle and her developing friendship with her latest client, Lark, a former teen movie star. Even her friendship/ not-friendship with Sibby is really well done; the confusion and hurt Meg feels at the breakdown of their friendship is palpable and often painful to listen to as the former besties continue to drift apart.
The one stumbling block – and I’m not sure if this is one of those “it’s me, not you” things, or because an audiobook about something so inherently visual was going to lose something in translation – but I grew a little impatient with Meg’s flights of fancy, especially when she went off at a tangent during a conversation or a train of thought and left me hanging, waiting for the conclusion. I wanted to yell at her to stick to the point, please!
Nicol Zanzarella is an experienced, accomplished narrator I’ve enjoyed listening to on several occasions, so I was pleased to see her name on the cover of this audiobook. Her mezzo-range voice is pleasant to listen to, and she delivers a strong, well-paced and expressive performance, differentiating effectively between all the characters and providing distinct, easily recognisable portrayals of the two principals. She’s a terrific vocal actress and is really good at getting to the emotional heart of each scene or conversation, regardless of whether it’s between Meg and Reid or Meg and Sibby or Lark; I felt as though she really knew these people and that connection communicated itself – and extended itself – to me.
But while the narration is excellent, there was a problem with the sound quality, in that there’s a “muted” quality to the sound, as though the treble levels have been turned down, and which also made some of the lower frequency sounds difficult to hear (I might be getting on, but last time I checked, my hearing was fine!). And the volume is low throughout – I had to turn my mp3 player up to maximum whenever I listened to it, and then had to do the same to with the equipment in the car when I listened there – and I don’t usually have to do that. I thought at first that perhaps it was because I’d received an early and perhaps not-quite-finalised review copy from the publisher, but Melinda told me that she’d purchased a copy from Audible and had the same experience, so I suspect it’s a fault with the master copy.
That criticism aside, Love Lettering is a charming, tender, quirky and, above all, truly romantic story, and I’d recommend it to anyone wanting to listen to a romance featuring well-written, three-dimensional characters who grow as individuals through their association with one another. Nicol Zanzarella’s narration more than does the story justice, but I did have to knock a half-point off my narration grade to account for the problems with the sound quality.
Caz
Buy Love Lettering by Kate Clayborn on Amazon
