A Storybook Ending

A book reviewer revised a disjointed home into the perfect setting for her family

- By Olivia Hosken

Decorators like to say every room tells a story. But Melissa LaSalle, known on Instagram as “The Book Mommy,” felt that after some choppy additions, her 1930s Colonial- style home outside Washington, D.C., had lost the plot. She enlisted interior designer Melissa Colgan, formerly an editor at Martha Stewart Weddings, Elle Decor, and House Beautiful (and part of this year’s Next Wave class), to revise its story by reworking the layout to suit her family of four—with plenty of reading nooks, of course.

“We wanted there to be a sense of who the family is from the second you