There is, they say, nothing new under the sun.
Hyperbolic spin artists may beg to disagreed, seeking to convince that their new x, y or z is totally, excitingly, thrillingly new, but the truth is pretty much everything has been done before by someone somewhere, or usually some when, and so, the trick becomes to tell a story which, while it almost inevitably has to riff on a previously told narrative, feel like its fresh and hot off the storytelling press.
That’s the great challenge facing assistant editor Savannah Cade, protagonist of Meet me in the Margins by Melissa Ferguson, who, in-between shepherding neurotic authors from impossible hurdle to easily-solved obstacle status, and making good books even better, is writing her own rom-com, one which she believes manages to surmount the old and true to be something quite romantically its own.
But when a mortifying incident in front of all the assembled staff at the august publishing house at which she works leads to her manuscript facing unwanted public scrutiny, a trauma magnified by the fact that the house’s founder and lead publisher hates romance, believing it too lowbrow and unworthy of her company’s attention (or anyone’s really), forcing her to hide it away in a garret in the Victorian-era building in which she works, she comes to discover that maybe she hasn’t been so cutting edge, after all.
In fact, the mysterious editor who finds her sequestered manuscript and dares to make a series of highly critical editorial notes the margin, believes her work, while promising, to be derivative and enthrall to tropes and cliches we’ve seen a million starry-eyed times before, meaning Savannah either has to take what they say seriously or give up on her dream of being a writer entirely.
My jaw tightens intuitively as I read the paragraph beneath it: ‘Time slowed as he slipped one hand to her shoulder, then cradled her neck as they stood there beneath the maple tree, the whisper of passing cars all around …’
There is no doubt about it.
William Pennington knows. (P. 22)
Savannah isn’t necessarily inclined to throw in the towel since (a) writing is her heartbeat and a necessity of she wants to feel human and (b) she has the interest of LEGENDARY romance genre editor Claire Donovan who has given her 44 days to prove her promising but ill-executed manuscript can deliver on the beguiling potential of its premise.
Thus, the race is on, with Savannah with the help of her mysterious editing benefactor whom she never meets or sees – it’s a narrative contrivance that these two people never cross paths but Meet me in the Margins is so buoyantly and emotively written that you happily let that one pass – determined to fix what is broken and realise her dream of moving form editing to writing, or at the very least, let them share space in what her highly-strung, nightmarishly perfectionist sister Olivia believes is a chronically under-used life.
Much of the charm of this jauntily-realised tale comes from the way Savannah interacts with her unseen editor, with the two of them sharing ever more intimate accounts of their lives in margins that, by the end, must be significantly crowded indeed.
Outside of the turret which quickly becomes her creative haven and work home-away-from-home, Savannah is finding herself flirting and delightfully sparring with handsome new publisher of her division, Will Pennington, a man who, though he wears well-fitted suits and has an unforgivingly intense eagle-eye when it comes to keeping his family’s publishing house afloat, is refreshingly and mischieviously down-to-earth.
The attraction is there, as is the idea that he may be the mysterious editor – that we don’t immediately go down that path is due to some slight but effective narrative sleight of hand by Ferguson who convincingly makes the case for someone else completely being Savannah’s editing saviour – and the back and forth between these two people, each with challenges and struggles of their own, gives a real snappy, sparky vibrancy to Meet me in the Margins which surges with the vivacity of the great rom-coms of old.
Brought to market by Christian publisher Thomas Nelson, Meet me in the Margins is not your typical modern romance with nary a hint of sex or anything untoward happening between Will and Savannah, but in some ways this gives the novel a distinctively refreshing point of difference where the will-they-won’t-they buzz gets full and fun reign.
Key to this kind of rom-com is snappy, clever dialogue that brims with sparkling personality and heady wit, and Meet me in the Margins has that in spades, and in fact, much of what turning the pages ever faster, is a desperate need to see just where the vivaciously enjoyable wordplay goes next.
Beneath my question, Why are you helping me? are the words: Because I believe in this story. I believe in Cecilia. Cecilia is real. Flawed. Human and yet, still, one of a kind. You have written a story that gives readers hope that they, too, despite all their blemishes, can and should be valued the same way. This is a story the world needs to hear.
I read and read the paragraph a dozen times.
He loves my story. He believes in Cecilia. Likes her. Gets her.
And if values Cecilia, he values …
No, I can’t make assumptions.
I stand up, and with it, my resolution is clear.
Sam or not, I am falling for my mystery man, (P. 206)
One of the key things any rom-com needs is to feel fizzy and excitingly promising, reflecting just how buoyantly alive a person feels when they’re falling in love, and Meet me in the Margins has this vibe pretty much all the way through, sustaining it even in the more serious passages where life takes a turn for the worse for Will and Savannah at different poins.
Ferguson neatly balances the romantically lightweight and the existentially substantial to deliver up a story and characters who don’t simply inhabit some sort of rarefied fairytale but who have a lot to battle through before they get their happy ever after.
In keeping with almost all rom-coms, and in stark contrast to its mantra that you must find a way to newly express that which has been done a thousand times before, we know precisely how Meet me in the Margins is going to end up but Ferguson still manages to make it all feel fresh and different, a heroic achievement given how easy it is to tumble into the genres ever-lurking, chasmic tropes and cliches.
As rom-coms go, Meet me in the Margins is a supreme, cloaked-identity delight, easily refuting Ms. Pennington’s claims that romance belongs with the lowest of the low, giving us an intelligent, clever couple who deserve to be together, even if half the time they’re unaware they need that, dialogue that is zippy and compellingly fun to read and real emotional substance to go with the confected romance that burbles and surges happily along, carrying us with it to an ending that, while expected, feels like the kind of reassurance we need that life works out just fine much of the time, all signs leading up to that to the contrary.