When I read "Writers and Lovers" I was so blown away I needed to take a break from reading other books. I don't know what sorcery Lily King is privy to because like "Writers and Lovers," "Heart the Lover" made me feel simultaneously hopeful and gutted. King has this innate ability to make the ordinary seem imbued with so much magic: the simple act of falling in love, of figuring out your life as a young and not-so-young adult, of chasing your dreams and dealing with the inevitable disappointment. This is a book about the fact that some people you never get over, that timing can be everything, but also that life is so much more than any one action. Believe me when I said I picked up this book and could not put it down for a single second until I was done—about five hours later. Lily King, I will read your proverbial grocery list, so to speak.

This book follows three college seniors, how they meet, how they know each other, their differences and similarities and the ways they stay connected to each other throughout their lives.

Really enjoyed this book. The characters felt so real and lifelike. I loved the different conversations and parallels between the three of them. This was not a romance but there was real and believable relationships.

I also really loved the fact that the narrator is not named until the very end (She is jokingly called Jordan throughout the book by the two other characters)

This was a quick read, but it was thought provoking and visceral. Highly recommend.

Thank you to netgalley for the opportunity to read this ARC.

Writers & Lovers is one of my favorite books of all time, solidifying Lily King as an author I will always read. King describes grief and love in such beautiful ways. She has a particular talent for capturing the sentiments of how love is transformed after experiencing loss, the understanding that time is precious and nothing important should be withheld. The depictions of romantic love in this book are honest, delightful at times, and heart wrenching.

Somehow, I had completely missed the “delightful connective thread to Writers & Lovers” part of the description of this book, so I was completely blown away. Lily King never ceases to amaze me. This book will stay with me for a long time :,) so grateful to NetGalley for the ARC!

Oh my goodness...I can't remember the last time I was THIS moved by a book, and it totally caught me by surprise. This was a very beautiful and subtle deep dive into the relationships between 3 people. I don't want to say too much becuase so much of the beauty of the store is in the reveals.

LOVED!!! Do not miss! Thank you to Netgalley and Grove Atlantic for the ARC. This book will be out 9/30/25.

Thanks to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for the advanced reader copy.

In the fall of senior year, the narrator (eventually nicknamed "Jordan") meets two other college seniors--Sam and Yash--in a literature class. When Jordan starts dating Sam, it sets off a messy, complicated love triangle that strains friendships and calls into question what loving another person actually means. Twenty years later, when "Jordan" has created a new life for herself, Yash and Sam come back into her life in unexpected ways and force her to reexamine the past and the choices she made.

Lily King sure knows how to metaphorically pull your heart out of your chest. In a slim 256 pages, she manages to drop the reader deep into the messy, complicated lives of the three main characters. At times "Jordan" comes across as annoying, until one remembers all the uncertainty and passivity that can come from being in your twenties. There are no easy answers or tidy solutions in HEART THE LOVER. It's the perfect kind of meaty fall story. This is definitely a book I'll be thinking about for a while.

Heart the Lover is out September 30, 2025.

Heart the Lover quietly captivated me with its raw, intimate look at first love and the complexities of friendship. King’s elegant prose beautifully captures youthful passion and the lasting impact of choices made—and not made. It’s a tender, reflective read that stayed with me long after I completed it.

It's hard for me to share the majority of my thoughts about this book without having any spoilers... However, I can say that I really enjoyed it! I was shocked by how fast I finished it without really spending more than my down time reading it which is always a clear sign of my enjoyment.

The narrator, nicknamed Jordan, meets Sam and Yash in a college literature class. The pair live off campus, house sitting for a professor, and soon Jordan is spending all of her time there discussing literature, playing cards, and falling in and out of relationships. The center of this book is those relationships, even as the story moves beyond Jordan's college years. Heart the Lover, unsurprisingly from the title, focuses on love: young love, old love, love between friends, love for a specific place and time, love of literature, and love that stays with you.

If you liked Lovers & Writers, this book is a must.

4.25 ⭐️

HEART THE LOVER by Lily King

While I really did like this novel, I have to start out with a complaint. I detest when an author is unnecessarily coy. Sure, coyness is part of a thriller, and in that context I would say coyness is part of the ride you signed up for.

However, this is literary fiction. Coyness is not needed, and it actually incensed me in this one.

In this novel, our unnamed narrator (nicknamed Jordan) is a senior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill - the same school the author went to. There she meets Sam, and they start up a relationship. Sam and his roommate are housesitting for a professor, and Jordan ends up spending time at the house because it’s an awesome professor’s house and so much better than where she lives. She becomes part of the friendship circle and their parties, which include playing card games that involve “heart the lover”…until she and Sam break up.

Spanning over several decades, Jordan’s first love always stays with her. I love how the author describes the time Jordan spends with these young men, the minutia of their time together. It brought back those college memories so well to me, and it made me ponder how personal this novel is for the author and how much of the author is in Jordan. As my own daughter is only a year away from college, I can’t wait for her to experience these unique moments that are so impactful to that time in a person's life.

Heart the Lover
by Lily King
Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2025
Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the ARC of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.
I loved this book!
Written with the superb wit and emotional sensitivity fans and critics of Lily King have come to adore, Heart the Lover is a deeply moving love story that celebrates literature, forgiveness, and the transformative bonds that shape our lives. Wise, unforgettable, and with a delightful connective thread to Writers & Lovers, this is King at her very best, affirming her as a masterful chronicler of the human experience and one of the finest novelists at work today.

In Heart the Lover, King has captured love, young love, old love, first loves that stay with you forever. Through college, forming bonds that shape lives, living surrounded in literature and intellect, onto later life, living with choices made and being thrown back to where it all began.

I’m being obtuse, I know, but going into this blind is the best way. This is an all encompassing read, the type to save for a weekend and lose yourself in. They type that will require tissues. I loved it thoroughly. This was my first Lily King, I’m so grateful to have two more of her books here waiting for me!

This book is beautifully written! I loved the first quarter but ultimately it was not for me. It is a very sad book. A slice of life expertly written. I absolutely loved Euphoria. I think many readers will love this book. For me it was too sad and maybe too narrow in scope. Again - so personal. I think many readers will cherish. I loved the main character and wish it had kept following her in the other parts of her life.

This was my first Lily King and I was immediately drawn in by her gorgeous prose. Set in the 1980s, we meet a trio of students -- the narrator (nicknamed Jordan) and Sam and Yash. They are nerdy literature students who have deep discussions and fall in and out relationships with each other. This novel is a thoughtful look at young love, friendships, and how the choices we make affect the rest of our lives. I cannot wait to read more Lily King -- Heart the Lover is a masterpiece.

Heart the Lover is my first read by Lily King and I have mixed feelings.

I enjoyed the characters, the (totally pretentious) literary discussions and the red herring in the beginning. Most of all, I loved the bittersweet tone of the whole story. The protagonist is a writer and the book is framed as her finally writing a story about "you", though we don't know who "you" is for a while. It is written in a way that is wistful and melancholy, so that I read feeling inexplicably sad even when nothing sad was happening.

The problem was that the more I read, the more sentimental it became. The pretentious philosophical musings swing back and forth between vaguely interesting and deeply annoying, and I got to the point where the combination of sentimentality and philosophizing made me wonder if I hadn't picked up a John Green book by mistake.

As we got into the later chapters, I was moved by what was happening but also irked by the cheesiness of some of the character interactions. I also thought it was easy to predict what we were building towards-- even early on in the novel --and was disappointed to see I was right.

Heart the Lover by Lily King is absolutely set to be one of my favourite books of the year - I loved everything about it.

The book follows a narrator who we only know as Jordan (a nickname given to her) from college to adulthood and all of the loved ones she has during that time. It starts with Sam and Yash, two star students who live in a professor’s house off campus, and all that she learns from them as she navigates the complexities of relationships while young and ends with her as an adult dealing with some really complex life events. It’s best to go into the book not knowing much as there are so many surprises to read as you go along and it was fascinating seeing these unfold.

The writing was beautiful, really capturing what love is like - both the good and the bad - and how love changes as we grow up. The characters were all brilliant, but particularly Jordan as you really started to understand the choices she made and the difficulties she faced.

An excellent read, definitely a five star read.

Heart the Lover explores the unsettling concept that choices we make when we’re young can shape everything that comes next. The author confronts the many forks in the road where retrospectively we wonder what would have happened had we made different choices. The three protagonists (Sam, Yash and Jordan) meet as college students in the mid-1980s. All are gifted, ambitious, intense and creative.. Their couplings encompass lust, love, jealousy, grief and forgiveness. As the narrative unfolds over three decades, none of their lives turn out exactly as expected though each character evolves in a beautifully crafted story that is tender, emotional, complex and lingers long after the final page.

Thank you to NetGalley and to Grove Atlantic for the eARC in exchange for this review.

Emotionally complex and covering decades, this story opens with three college kids in their final semester and closes at mid-life. Yash and Sam are the star students of the 17th century literature class when our protagonist first befriends them. Early in their friendship they nickname her Jordan, in reference to the female golfer and friend of Daisy Buchanan from The Great Gatsby, and henceforth, that is all we know her as. At the heart of their early friendship is a unique card game called Sir Hincomb Funnibuster and the beautiful home of a professor on sabbatical. Jordan and Sam date briefly, break up spectacularly, and then the real romance of the novel begins. Over the course of the following years, each of the three make choices whose consequences change their lives forever. Decades after Jordan experiences horrendous betrayal and heartache, Yash unexpectedly visits and upsets the comfortable life she’s living with her family. She must then wrestle with decisions from her youth and come to terms not only with mistakes the others made that hurt her, but also the ways she has hurt her old friends. Ultimately, Heart the Lover is a tale of beauty and forgiveness. I will be thinking about this one for a long time.

This book is lovely and perfect in every way. It is emotionally gripping, witty, smart, and sharp. And running through it all, connecting the beginning to end, tying it all together so exquisitely, is one playing card: the King of hearts, known in their game as Heart the Lover.

Many, many thanks to NetGalley and to Grove Press for the advanced copy of this beautiful novel in exchange for my honest review.

On the surface, this felt like it could have been your run-of-the-mill story of three friends that met in college, but Lily King has such a way with writing characters and ripping your heart into shreds.

The female narrator, nicknamed Daisy and then Jordan, befriended two classmates, Sam and Yash, and together, they formed a nerdy little trio. They discussed classic books, their writing, and all the comings and goings of their lives. They loved each other strongly - at some points, it was a romantic love, and for other moments, it was a love between friends. The book covered almost three decades, and we followed them through their various decisions that produced lasting consequences.

I quickly got sucked into this book, and even though I had a sense of where it might lead, it still felt just as touching / heartbreaking / shocking. I adored these characters (well, maybe not so much Sam in the beginning), and I wish the story continued for another 100 pages.

Like all Lily King’s works, this is gorgeously written. I read it in on sitting and found it so moving I cried in public— I don’t think a book has made me actually cry in many years. At first, the story felt wrapped in loneliness, but the second half is more about the connections we make and how they push and pull us apart, and the regrets and memories we are left with. There were a few points in the narrative that felt unnecessary or forgotten, but a writer as capable as King surely meant for those things. I will definitely recommend to my book club and other readers who enjoy immersive literary fiction this well-done. Thank you so much to Netgalley and Grove Press for the advanced copy!

Ahhh Lily does it again. I was sobbing at the end and it’s very hard for a book to have that much influence on my emotions, but here we are. Her writing style is so “stream of thought” that you feel connected to the characters in a way you could never be outside of literary fiction. I loved that each of them had their flaws yet you kind of rooted for them equally. I also loved the timeline. Splitting it between 3 decades was really insightful and demonstrates how you never forget your first love. Really well done.

I haven't loved Lily King's books in the past, and I think this established that she isn't the author for me, though I did like parts of this book. Our main character is a college student who falls into a love triangle with two intellectual boys who are roommates. We see their relationships in the first part of the book, but then there's a big time leap in the second half, and things have vastly changed for these friends. I don't want to say what the big change is, but it does take a sad turn.