Thank you NetGalley for the ARC!

4.5 stars. As a first time Lily King reader, was this a beautifully written and equally devastating read! Initially I was unsure where this book was heading but was still captivated by the storyline so was more than happy to be along for the ride. Part One introduced the three characters the book follows and the complex love triangle between "Jordan," Yash and Sam. Part Two let me know the turn the story was about to take and Part Three ripped my heart out and stomped on it.

Half a star deducted for purely personal reasons, as I disagree with the fact that "Jordan" as a mother would chose to spend time with her dying former college boyfriend than her own child who is unwell and needing brain surgery but I'm happy to agree to disagree.

I love anything that Lily King writes so I already had high expectations for this book + it delivered! It's a propulsive story of friendship, secret romances, regrets, reckonings, forgiveness, hope + love. I don't want to give anything away but the ending had me in tears and I will be thinking of their love story for a long time!

Outlier alert! Okay to throw tomatoes but nothing heavier, okay? Besides, I didn’t hate this book, I just didn’t love it. I was expecting to love it, though, since King is a favorite author, and although the story picked up as it continued, it wasn’t enough to get me to crack a smile.

Part 1 was ho hum, and I didn’t feel invested in the characters. There are brief allusions to literature and some academic discussions that I found unnecessary and tedious (i.e., boring), and they detracted from the story.

The novel is about a college student, Jordan, who falls in love with two guys who are close friends with each other. There is love but also sadness and frustration.

The book is in three parts. Each part shows you a later time in Jordan’s life. Parts 2 and 3 grabbed me, thank goodness. Suddenly I was invested, and I cared about the characters and their feelings. There’s grief, longing, regret, love—and you believe all of it. King did a great job of connecting Jordan’s past and present lives. It took some finesse, as the fast-forwards are stretched out over decades. But I sort of held a grudge because I felt cheated that the character development in Part 1 didn’t work for me.

In Part 3, which was intense and heartfelt, King briefly ponders some philosophical ideas on time and existence. Although it was trying to be profound, I didn’t like it stuck into the story. The ending is sad and engaging.

One weird thing: At the start of the book, Jordan is using a typewriter. Nowhere does it say that the story starts in the 70s or early 80s, so I was left with a big “Huh?”

I don’t like the book title big time. At first I thought “Heart” was supposed to be like the heart emoji when it means “love” in a phrase, as in “I [heart emoji] New York.” Like it was supposed to be [heart emoji] the Lover. Love the lover? Makes no sense. Luckily, King wasn’t making the title cutesy like that. The title is based on a weird term from a (fictional?) card game. I don’t know why she chose it to be the title of the book! It bugs me that the title sounds like it is put together wrong. It just doesn’t flow; it gives me a jolt, stops me in my tracks, every time I see it.

Overall, an okay read; just no wowsville here. King can tell a story, no doubt about it. But I remember her books as being deeper and her language being more nuanced and interesting. And no comparison to some of her earlier works, like Euphoria, an all-time favorite.

I read this after two pogo-stick hits, so they were hard acts to follow. Maybe if I had read this one at a different time, I might have been singing a different tune.

Thanks to NetGalley for the advance copy.

Publication date: September, 2025

HEART THE LOVER |

I finished this book sobbing multiple times. The book is beautiful. It took my breath away.

I have loved some of the author's past work so I was expecting to really enjoy this one, but I think it's my favorite from what I've read of hers.

I won't go into the plot too much - but it's a campus novel in the beginning starring some students who shared a 17th century lit class in college.

It's about desire, friendships, and grief in the form of many types of goodbyes not said properly. Either said inimically between past lovers, between friends caught in the crossfires, between family -

The relationships between these budding people, who are figuring themselves out, testing themselves in the waters amongst the competition, are funny, and endearing and with sharp edges in all the wrong moments.

I found it absolutely endearing and heartfelt. I started in the wee hours, up with my little one, and had to finish after putting her to bed. Closing the book, I felt invigorated, reminded of why I love reading.

I went into this one blindly after hearing one of my favorite podcasters recommend it… and wow. This book was beautiful. One of those rare books where time slows to a halt as you’re reading it. It’s a little more literary than I am used to, and I found myself having to go back and re-read long sentences to make sure I was following at times. However, once I got into it, that wasn’t much of a problem. Fans of Past Lives or Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow will love this one.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy of the book in exchange for my honest feedback.

Lily Kings writing is masterful. She knows the art of creating characters that are dynamic but still deeply relatable. This book was surprising and thought provoking and used literary form to provoke ideas and thoughts about love, friendship, grief and other themes in a way that was easy to understand as reader.

I wasn't expecting to love this as much as I did, but wow. Lily King knows how to capture the moment. I went in with little expectations as I did not know what the story was going to entail but rest assured I felt so many emotions throughout. It almost makes you realise just how short life is and how it can change so rapidly and suddenly. This was a quick read for me as I felt the writing was fast and easy to understand. Absolutely would recommend if you want an emotional page turner!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the Kindle ARC. Heart the Lover follows the narrator "Jordan" - a nickname given to her by fellow college students, Yash and Sam. Jordan dates same but there is an undercurrent between her and Yash and things become very complicated. Youth and inexperience lead to the triangle taking different paths in life but leading back to each other 20 years later after their lives have changed immeasurably. I've read a few of Lily King's works and Heart the Lover is her best work to date. I believe she has become one of the greatest writers of her generation. Heart the Lover is witty, intelligent and tender all at once.

I loved this book. It has all the beautiful writing and whip-smart funny dialogue and sexy love interests that you expect from her books, a quick pace and strong, messy main character. The characterizations are deep, real. I found the book surprising, though, in the sense that it bookends a previous book (no spoilers!) in a way that I didn’t think needed to be a spoiler. I think I’d have liked to know that, as a reader going in. Nevertheless, it is a great, great read. I can’t wait to suggest it

I reread Friends and Lovers right before picking this up, and even so, I was a little distracted for the first 50 pages or so, trying to figure out the extent of the overlap. (I was misled by the movie they watched early on.) Once I got it, though, I was glad to have F&L fresh in my mind. I don't think it's strictly necessary, but it does add helpful context the characters and relationships. I wasn't sold on the title until she nailed it with the scene ending in "now I'm the one who wants to go upstairs to ponder time and existence for a while." Indeed.

Jordan’s senior year of college changes when she meets Sam and Yash. The boys are living in a professors home while he is on sabbatical, and their friendships quickly turn into more. We follow as the three grow up, and grow closer, and further apart over the years of their lives.

4.25 stars. PHEW. I was enjoying the first half of this book, but the second half….oh the second half. I could not put it down and finished with tears flowing down my face. This book is very character driven, and is written in a very stream of consciousness way, but it felt like the perfect way to tell this story. I went into this one pretty blind, and I encourage you to do the same. Because of that, I am going to leave this review with the following….just read this book. It is a quick read that packs a heavy punch.

Thank you to @groveatlantic for my gifted copy of this book!

Heart the Lover by Lily King
The narrator meets two other students while in college, they take her into their kind of exalted group and her life grows. But there is a love triangle that leads to complications. They all move on but connect again later in life, and learn more about each other and the friendship.

Lilly King’s “Heart the Lover” is a compelling, exceedingly well-written love story. Told in the first person by the protagonist nicknamed “Jordan,” it relates how she meets Sam and Yosh in college and charts the progress of their relationships to one another as they advance towards middle age. To borrow one of Ms. King’s sentences from the novel, “Heart the Lover” is a “saga of coming and going, of finding and losing each other, of letting go.” Along the way, it examines just about every emotion one can experience in a love affair: attraction, desire, lust, romantic love, impetuousness, comradery, humor, hope, betrayal, disappointment, bitterness, loneliness, regret, grief, deep sorrow, and even the grace that comes with acceptance. It’s a novel that deserves to be read at least twice.

My thanks to NetGalley, author Lilly King, and publisher Grove Atlantic | Grove Press for providing me with a complimentary ARC. All of the foregoing is my honest, independent opinion.

I was really looking forward to this one as I really enjoyed Lily Kings Other book and I was very interested in the subject matter because I am always interested in the topic of romantic relationships that have ended but there remains something inside of you for them forever. I’ve never been able to figure out if I am simply romanticizing the past and feeling nostalgic for other periods in my life or if I just have trouble disconnecting from people that I was once very connected to, but either way reading about heartbreak and difficult break ups and trying to sort out complicated feelings between two different people that you love but separate ways, has always interested in me because I feel that I have experience with that stuff and I enjoy reading about it from other people‘s perspectives to see if I connect with the feelings that they are having or have experienced. It makes me feel like it’s more of a normal state of being for people and it is not as unusual as it feels to me when years after a break up I still miss that person even if I am with someone knew that I love very much. So basically I enjoy reading about this stuff because it helps me work through my own heartache and causes me to look at things from different perspectives so whenever I come across a book that seems to do with these topics and is still considered literary function or contemporary – anything but actual romance – I am always eager to pick them up so when I read the blurb for this I was especially excited knowing I had really liked her writing in books before. But boy was I disappointed to be perfectly honest this felt to me like it was written by a completely different person. The cover did throw me off as it felt very much like a ChickLit cover rather than literary fiction which is my preference but sometimes people pick covers that I think are strange choices for the subject matter of the book so I just figured that this was one of those instances but as it turned out this book felt very much like a romance book and the saddest part is that I felt that Lily King had had to dump herself down a bit in order to appeal to romance readers. That’s not to say that romance readers are themselves dumb, but I think a lot of people choose to pick up romance books for their accessibility and perhaps they are turning to a book to help them wind down and relax and they would like to use as little brain power as is necessary to get to that point, so that’s why they don’t go choosing the newest Salman Rusty or the newest Murakami.

Anyway this wasn’t terrible, I have definitely read worse books but the intelligent writing and meaningful depth and complexity that I have found in her other books did not feel as prevalent here. The dialogue was extremely cheesy and there’s nothing worse to me than dialogue that feels like The sort of talking that nobody actually does, and that’s what this felt like. It just gave me cheesy vibes, I didn’t want it to but that’s what it felt like and I ended up being very disappointed. That doesn’t mean that I will not read Lily King‘s next book but this does feel like it was written by a different author and if you are looking for something similar than our other books I would not pick this one up.

A first time Lily King reader, I was blown away by Heart the Lover. With clarity and wit, this novel offers up an honest, emotionally devastating, and radiantly hopeful look into the ebbs and flows of lifelong friendship and romance and the phases of a relationship that live somewhere in-between. The prose managed to be smart while also funny and approachable. In under 260 pages, King crafts an intimate, sweeping love story—and managed to reduce me to tears, smiles, and everything in between. This novel has turned me into an overnight King fan. I feel so lucky to now have a rich back catalog to dive into.

I have always loved Lily King, so my expectations were high, and I can honestly say that she surpassed them. This book is many things: beautifully written, extremely emotive, gorgeously evocative, and, most of all, hugely moving. I doubt anyone could read this without crying; I inhaled it (I read it in an afternoon. I just couldn’t put it down). In the outstanding canon of Lily King’s literature, this book is her crowning glory.

This is a beautifully written book that got off to a slow start. At first, I wasn't sure I was going to finish it, but the complex characters and love triangle pulled me in, and I finished it in one day. Highly recommend.

Thank you Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for this arc.

This was a solid read. I like the use of a smaller story to explore more universal themes. I loved it as I was reading it. It moved fast and kept me gripped. I wanted to know what was happening and finished it in two quick sittings. However, I don’t find myself still thinking about it now that a few days have passed. Part 1 was definitely the strongest section but part 3 left me wanting a bit more. Part 3 felt too unrealistic with the entire family and friend group all knowing about an old college girlfriend and took me out of the story a bit.

This is the origin story of three college friends and the relationships they build over the decades of life. "Jordan" (a nickname) and her college boyfriend Sam have a complicated romantic relationship that is complicated by their individual connections to Yash. The second half of the story leaps forward into adulthood when the three are reunited to deal with a heartbreaking situation. This book is heartfelt, sad, beautiful, and complex. Just like the relationships of our lives. I had a bit of a hard time connecting to the characters as their younger selves. I think that is just a reflection of my age! The adult feelings and relationships resonated much more with me and I was very emotionally invested in the end of the book. Lily King is an incredible writer and this book is such a reflection of her talent. Thanks to Lily King, Grove Atlantic, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

The unnamed female narrator (nicknamed Jordan à la The Great Gatsby)* and her male classmates (Sam and Yash) are college seniors whose lives remain connected long after graduation. Romance, friendship, careers, marriages, and children transpire as relationships endure across three decades and many miles. King reminds us that life is not a straight path, and filled with emotions of all shapes and sizes that, for better or worse, enriches our love. What is particularly noteworthy about her novel is what isn’t included as a bold structure decision that served to focus emotion and attention.

*until the last page

Netgalley and the publisher provided this book for review consideration, but all opinions are my own.