Score: 3.5/5 Bookmarks

Steam Level: 0🍆

Thank you to TLC Book Tours and Thomas Nelson for gifting me a review copy of Meet Me in the Margins by Melissa Ferguson.

I’m going to be frank and let you know that I did not enjoy the only other book I’ve read by this author (The Dating Charade) but I’m a believer in second chances….or a glutton for punishment, depending on whether you’re a glass half empty or full kind of person.

What I enjoyed:

• Fun Nashville setting.

• A book about books (always a win for me).

• Loved the premise of her secretly writing a novel and him secretly editing it.

• Adored them getting to know each other via notes passed back and forth on her manuscript.

• Secret reading room at the top of the old house / publishing office? Yes please!

What didn’t work for me:

• Savvy. For the most part I found her both boring and irritating—not a great combo.

• Toxic everything. Toxic work environment, toxic family relationships, toxic self talk…

• Savvy’s inner dialogue was often frenetic and so scattered that it really bothered me, pulling me out of the story. In fact, I found a lot of the dialogue to be a bit clumsy and worded awkwardly so that it lost its flow.

Overall a cute premise, and I can never be mad about reading a book about writing and editing books. But maybe a secret editor could have tightened it up a little? 😬

Synopsis:

Savannah Cade is a low-level editor at Pennington Publishing, a prestigious publisher producing only the highest of highbrow titles. And while editing the latest edition of The Anthology of Medieval Didactic Poetry may be her day job, she has two secrets she’s hiding.

One: She’s writing a romance novel.

Two: She’s discovered the Book Nook—a secret room in the publishing house where she finds inspiration for her “lowbrow” hobby.

After leaving her manuscript behind one afternoon, she returns to the nook only to discover someone has written notes in the margins. Savannah’s first response to the criticism is defensive, but events transpire that force her to admit that she needs the help of this shadowy editor after all. As the notes take a turn for the romantic, and as Savannah’s madcap life gets more complicated than ever, she uses the process of elimination to identify her mysterious editor—only to discover that what she truly wants and what she should want just might not be the same.