2019 romance. Meg Mackworth hand-letters journals and planners, and
spots patterns in things; last year when Reid Sutherland and his
fiancée came in for their wedding stationery, she got a Feeling, and
couldn't resist working a hidden message of M-I-S-T-A-K-E into the
invitation. Now he's back…
So I just have to assume that hand-lettering journals is
something you can make a living at. It's entirely outside my
experience, but if I can enjoy reading about an elven veterinarian or
'splodey spaceships I should be able to cope with this too.
Both of these people are obsessed with visual detail and not
particularly facile in their social interactions, and I find it very
encouraging that this is presented as entirely normal and simply the
way some people are, rather than dismissing them as in some way "on
the spectrum" (all too often used to excuse bad behaviour either by
the person so dismissed or by people who interact with them). They
meet again; the wedding fell apart; she's creatively blocked; but
something in the conversation works for both of them. There are
arguments, and distractions, and all the usual romance things, but…
…dammit there are reasons for those things. He's cagy about his job
because of something about it that will of course come to a head
within the span of the book. They argue hurtfully because they aren't
natural arguers, so when it happens they hit as hard as possible to
make it stop. (Yeah, I can see myself there.)
Oh yeah and a minor character mentions her wife without anyone raising
an eyebrow and thank you. Sure, she isn't a romantic protagonist,
but to me this is just a normal thing, and I'm glad to read about
other people treating it as a normal thing too – and I know some
romance readers are ferociously conservative, so I'm glad to see
Clayborn not simply making minority sexualities invisible to avoid
causing mainstream offence.
There aren't quite the emphases I expected, but I very much enjoyed
this, perhaps in part because the protagonist's job is so alien (and
yet recognisably creative and artistic).
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