I really loved this story. It was a real, raw, honest look at what grief can take the shape of in many forms for different people. I loved walking through the thoughts of a writer who doesn’t technically have it all figured out but keeps trucking on. I loved the writing even more. The writing is lovely and beautiful as we follow along in the plot. It’s a perfect combination of literary prowess and good plot.

Despite my wariness to read fiction with a writer as the main character, (because I really cannot help think it is thinly-veiled autobiography—though I know this is wrong and judge-y), when I saw this book was written by Lily King, it was an easy selection. I loved everything about Euphoria, including the cover, which I still sometimes pull out of my bookcase and turn so that everyone can see it…(ok, maybe that’s just for me.) Anyway, Writers & Lovers is a poignant story of grief, anxiety, love and other life lessons. I especially love that the character is “coming of age” in her 30s, and fighting the status quo her former classmates have succumbed to. And, while I do think that the ending may have been a little too tidy, sometimes, in the middle of my messy life, I enjoy the respite of a tidy, happily ever after book.

Many thanks to Grove Atlantic for an ARC. Due to be published in March 2020.

As it says in the publisher’s blurb, this is a portrait of the artist as a young woman. Casey is in her early 30s, has an MFA in writing—and is tens of thousands in debt and being chased by creditors to prove it—and has been working on her novel for six years. She is living in a moldy dump and working as a waitress in a bistro in Harvard Square. She’s just been dumped and is struggling to cope. She is estranged from her father, her only brother lives 3,000 miles away, and Casey is still subsumed by grief at her beloved mother’s sudden death a few months earlier. Her anxiety is mounting and sleep seems a distantly remembered dream. She’s filled with doubts about her choices and wonders when she’s going to grow up and start her “real life,” but she stubbornly continues to work on her novel.

If I’ve made her seem a nervous wreck, well, she is, but she’s a very likeable wreck. Casey and her world are presented so vividly and lovingly, everything springs off the page in delicious lucid prose. Even her writing life is described in interesting detail; you get a good sense of the process. A lot of Casey’s friends are writers, and there’s a lot of writerly talk. Casey meets two very different new men and starts seeing both of them. One is a widowed novelist with two small sons and the other a high school teacher who is working on his writing.

Then comes a series of crises: Casey worries about her health, where she’s going to live, how she’s going to earn. (I’m being vague to do my best to avoid spoilers.) Casey’s world is truly crashing in on her. Then, a breakthrough: one bit of good luck and positive news after another, and Casey is launched. The writing itself gathers momentum here, to create the sense of giddy happiness as things start to fall into place for this likeable heroine.

Highly recommended.

“I don’t write because I think I have something to say. I write because if I don’t, everything feels even worse.”


In Writers & Lovers, Lily King portrays an intimate and profoundly heartfelt slice of life that brims with wry humor and precise observations on grief, loneliness, identity, and creativity. This is truly a gem of a novel, a wonderful display of bravura. King seamlessly blends together realism and romanticism, capturing with humor and tenderness Casey’s everyday experiences and struggles.

“[I] think about how you get trained early on as a woman to perceive how others are perceiving you, at the great expense of what you yourself are feeling about them. Sometimes you mix the two up in a terrible tangle that’s hard to unravel.”


Writers & Lovers transports its readers to Massachusetts in the summer of 1997. Casey Peabody, our narrator, is in her thirties and attempting to navigate life after her mother’s sudden death. A recent heartbreak has made her feel all the more lonely and vulnerable, and Casey clearly longs to feel that she belongs and that she has not wasted the last years of her life writing a book that will never be published. While most of her friends have abandoned their creative pursuits—opting for more sensible careers and or starting their own families—Casey remains devoted to her writing and to the idea of one day becoming a published author. After her mother’s death, Casey feels even more unmoored and unsure of herself. She finds herself observing the customers who eat at the restaurant she works for, yearning for a connection of her own. Eventually, Casey grows close to two men, both of them writers, one is famous and a widowed father of two, the other is around her age.

“I have a problem with that sometimes, getting attached. Other people’s families are a weakness of mine.”


This novel gives us a glimpse into a particular period of Casey’s life. From her day-to-day activities and worries to the sorrow she feels at her mother’s death and the anxiety brought by her writing, her job, her college debt, and health concerns. The wry wit that characterises her inner-monologue mitigate the many trials and misadventures, Casey, experiences throughout the course of the novel. While the romantic relationship she forms along the way does play a role in Casey’s journey, this novel is first and foremost about her writing. From the process of creating a story to how it feels to write, Writers & Lovers is very much a love letter to writing. Casey’s reflections on writing reveal her relationship to this craft as well as the different ways in which the public and publishing industry view male and female authors. King’s meditations on life, grief, and creativity demonstrate extreme acuity and insight.

“What I have had for the past six years, what has been constant and steady in my life is the novel I’ve been writing. This has been my home, the place I could always retreat to. The place I could sometimes even feel powerful, I tell them. The place where I am most myself.”


Casey is the novel’s star and I found her voice to be hugely endearing. Despite her dalliances with melancholy, deep-down she remains hopeful that she will publish her novel. King captures Casey’s idiosyncrasies, her quirks, the way she thinks and expresses herself, in such vivid detail that she felt very much like a real person to me. The characters around her too came across as fully fleshed out individuals whose story doesn’t revolve around Casey herself. They are nuanced and multifaceted, regardless of how often they crop up in Casey’s narrative. The restaurant scenes were so realistic that they reminded me of my unfortunate time in F&D (it truly feels like a microcosm).

Writers & Lovers is a deeply affecting and ultimately hopeful story about a woman’s determination to pursue her dreams, in spite of societal pressure and of other people undermining her capabilities as an author or life choices. The author’s prose, the setting, the characters, the subject matter, all of these spoke to me. While reading Writers & Lovers I was struck by a sense of nostalgia while reading this, perhaps due to it being set in the 90s, which is still lingering over me as I write this. I found myself desperate to see how Casey’s story would conclude and unwilling to part ways with her.

“It’s a particular kind of pleasure, of intimacy, loving a book with someone.”


Inspiring, witty, and full of heart Writers & Lovers is a truly luminous novel that I can’t wait to read again and again.

PS: the first time I tried reading this I hated it so I can see why it wouldn’t appeal to everyone. At the time I was in the doldrums and took Casey’s romantic expression too seriously. My apologises to the 40 people or so who liked my original review of this but I now love this book (what can i say, i'm a turncoat 🤡).

I love nothing more than a classic girl coming of age novel and Writers and Lovers by Lily King is exactly that.

The ending was a little too tidy, but I honestly didn’t care since it hit all of the other notes just right.

While I found certain pieces of Casey's plight relatable (hitting your 30s, feeling like you need to be a *grown up* suddenly, trying to find your footing in a career landscape that's bleak and unpromising, attempting to finish a manuscript - been there!), at times, I felt exhausted by the mediocrity of her relationships and slow crawl through the first half to three-quarters of the book. The pacing picked up for me near the end, but it took me a while to get into!

Thank you to Netgalley and Grove Atlantic for advanced access to this title!

I had mixed feelings about this book, even though it seemed like it should be right up my alley. It captures life in your early 30s when you don't have your life completely figured out, and perhaps that's why it didn't quite grab me as it should - it was a bit close to home for my taste. The writing is beautiful and the characters believable, however.

Embarrassed this took me so long as I got it as an ARC and my pile just stacked up.

Lily King manages to write so spot on about feelings, inner musings.. this felt like a true escape and a real life happening. I wanted more from the MC but it also felt real that I didn’t get all of her. I, for one, am very impressed by that and the journey this book invites you into. I felt sincere pain and annoyance with/at characters for their decisions and what they were going through. The plot isn’t really one in the best way. It’s meandering in a real life way (except maybe the ending wrap up) with a big focus on attraction (men) and dreams (writing) but the undercurrent and companions of those means it also and even more so gets at the failures, gaps, disillusionments in those two complicated realms. And grief. Grief and connections is also there. I mean, being human, what a ride! And thanks to the authors who work their tails off to capture pieces of it.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was a lovely story about a girl who's been handed a bad deal in life. Her childhood was gave her every opportunity to succeed but along the way she got dealt a few blows. The characters were interesting and felt like real people. King's description of anxiety and panic attacks were spot on. There was a lot going on throughout the book but I do feel like it showed the natural progression of life - things definitely wrapped up like a bow but sometimes things just work out!

I absolutely loved this book. It deals with a woman trying to figure her life out while dealing with many hardships. The death of her mother, he never-ending pile of debt, her job, etc. All while trying to finish her novel. This was an amazing story and I definitely recommend it!

I'm late to the game since this book has already been out for quite a while, but I am glad that I was finally able to read it. Overall, I enjoyed it, especially the author's writing style. My big complaint though is the pacing. The first quarter of the book was painfully slow. I actually put it down for over a month because I was so bored. Once she meets Oscar, things finally start moving. I thought the characters of Oscar and Silas could have been a bit more developed, but I was happy with the way the story ended.

3.5/5 stars

I love lily king, but this book was not it for me. Trite and just boring. I would not recommend this book to any of my reader friends. It was beautifully written, but just the plot was not great. It took me a long time to get through this book honestly. I

Writers & Lovers is a novel that I really thought was going to be a 5 star book for me. It had so many things I love, an exploration of grief and loneliness and identity/feeling loss...I think that the grief aspects of this novel were done so well and I did not have a bad time reading this. There was just something...missing for me. I’m not sure why. It was hard to for me to connect with the narrator even though she had all of the struggles that I usually relate to. However, I did think this was a good novel and I will still recommended it, it’s just not a new favorite like I anticipated.

I wanted to like this book more than I did. It was my first experience with Lily King, not yet having read Euphoria, and perhaps my expectations were too high after seeing it on so many folks' best of the year lists.

It was reminiscent of the experience I've had reading authors like Stephanie Danler. The prose is beautiful, and there were several lines I mentally underlined that felt like they completely nailed it in terms of both specificity and universality, but it also felt very meandering in the way that I wasn't fully sure what the central driving plot line was until about halfway through.

It's an extremely interior novel, and there is a humming anxiety that builds and builds as one blow after another comes the main character, Casey's, way - yet there also is a distinct sense of distance and detachment built into the narrative. I found myself wholly engrossed in exceedingly particular scenes and moments, but never fully immersed in her world.

Casey, a 31-year-old woman wants to become a writer. But when she sees her MFA friends who have moved on and settled with law or engineering schools ,she gets anxious. Casey is struggling to write a novel from past 6 years, grieving the loss of her mother, has over $70,000 in student loans, works as a waitress and lives in a rented, mold smelling shed. She is having a rocky romantic life. Ok, Casey is a mess.

Yet, Casey is a very likable character. She gets anxious about her decision of writing a novel, but still wants to do it. As a reader we watch Casey go through her life , her interactions with different people and situations. Lily King has created a very nice atmosphere in the book which just rang true in so many ways.

This was a wonderful, witty and heartfelt novel.


Thank you NetGalley for the ARC in exchange of a Honest Review.

In this novel, Lily King manages to capture the liminal space so many of us occupy as we balance what we love with what we feel we should love. What I enjoyed about this novel is the decision King made to center Casey's career struggles rather than her romances with not one, but two (!) men. As she mourns her mother and ruthlessly commits to a writing schedule many of us can only dream of with envy, Casey falls for a fellow would-be writer who is her same age, and whose apartment smells a little like socks. She also finds herself entangled with an older, semi-famous author who is a widower with two young children. Standing on the cusp of her thirties, she chews on the advice of her friend: "It's always a choice between firework and coffee in bed." In the end, wonderfully, she realizes that she actually needs to make a very different choice: what's best for her? Who sees her for the person she truly is? Who motivates and believes in her? I won't tell you the answer, but the ending is a beautiful portrait of a young woman leaning into the person she wants to become.

An excellent story of adulthood and following your dreams, however expensive they may turnout. It's a perfect read I think for those who love a good campus novel.

This book is for any writer who wants to be reminded of the sanctity of literary purpose. I am moved and gripped by the tenacity of the leading character to do the work amidst great obstacles. One line especially sweeps me up into her contemplative state, when Casey thinks, "I don't write because I think I have something to say. I write because if I don't, everything feels even worse."

I really slept on this one and regret not getting to it sooner. Casey is going through IT: her mom recently and suddenly died, she's reeling from a shitty situationship, she's broke and in debt, and she's been working on the same book for 6 years. The grief and pain here - and the struggle to know what to do with it, how to get through it, how to move forward, how to still be a person in the world - is a low thrum that carries you into and through every page.

There were moments that were heartbreaking and so many passages that just seemed to cut right through all the bullshit with carefully phrased truth in observation. I'm not sure why, but a part of me thought this was going to be something pretentious and eyeroll-worthy. Instead it's a meditation on grief and strength and dreams and figuring out what you want and what you need and growing up in your 30s. It was beautiful and I'm glad I experienced it.

A book about a struggling writer and her seemingly crumbling life - what's not to like? Lilly King's protagonist Casey is a down on luck creative writing major with a book she's been working on for six years, amid punishingly backbreaking shifts at a restaurant to repay her student loans and other fast mounting bills while living in a potting shed cum garage of her brother's friend. She also lost her mother and is on a downward spiral in terms of her health. After giving Casey so much to worry about, King also throws a lifeline or two in the form of love interests - one a middle-aged widowed author with two adorable children and the other a charming middle school teacher. Between balancing her love interests, struggling to finish her novel and coping with her anxiety issues, can Casey find herself? I have not been invested in a book like this in a long time and Writers & Lovers was an absolute joy to read as King helps the readers navigate through the trials and tribulations of a struggling artist that makes you ache and delight in equal measure. Brilliant book.