Oh how I loved this book! I loved it the way I loved Writers and Lovers. With my whole heart. It’s so intimate and riveting and beautiful. The first book in a very long time that made me cry. And of course, as always with Lily King, the writing is stunning. Thank you for the advanced copy. This book will be my staff pick for the year.

3 stars- enjoyable reading experience, but for literary fiction I needed more character focus

I really enjoyed reading this. Let’s start there. I love a book with an academic setting, im a sucker for academia in all forms. I also love reading characters who love books (not surprising). I thought Lily King did an incredible job writing the setting (I felt very immersed) and writing the complex relationships between these three college students. They struggle as they choose religion over love or friendship, and friendship over love, and creative pursuits over comfort, etc etc etc. I really liked it!!!

Then at part 2 it lost me. Spoiler: there’s a time jump. We get taken out of the academic setting (boo) and we see these three characters as adults. Except we don’t, really. Their characters don’t really develop, we get a limited view on how their decisions in college really affect their lives 30 years later, and I felt there wasn’t enough going on. But my main issue is with the character development. I feel like I don’t know the FMC very well at all and even the two other main characters I felt detached from. In a literary fiction book where plot takes a seat, I expect rich characters with complex histories and struggles and interpersonal relationships. This fell flat for me unfortunately.

Thank u net galley for the ARC 🫶

What begins as a story of how three college friends meet turns into an incredible tale of friendship, family and enduring love. I read this book in one sitting and then immediately picked up Writers & Lovers. Lily King is an exceptional storyteller and I cannot get enough of her writing.

Heart the Lover felt like two incredible stories in one. The earlier timeline focused on the characters’ college years and early adult lives. It was filled with budding romances, developing identities and challenging friendships.

I was absolutely blown away by how these characters and their relationships developed as time went on. What matters in the first half of our lives doesn’t always carry the same weight in the second half but sometimes we are lucky enough to be surrounded by the same people in both halves. This book so beautifully captures what it means to find your people.

Everyone should read this book.

“A great novel, a truly great one, not only captures a particular fictional experience, it alters and intensifies the way you experience your own life while you’re reading it. And it preserves it, like a time capsule.“

This was a book full of strong emotions. I inhaled this in 3 days complete with smiling and crying my eyes out. As usual, King is a master of words.

Lily King has done it again… so good so good so good. The characters and the story has stuck with me. Loved all the descriptions of academia and everyone felt like a fully fleshed out person. Loved!!! The ending!! Wow… everything, the connections…

I LOVED THIS!! I read it on my plane ride from Singapore to Berlin. I’d read Writers & Lovers last year but this was more touching, focused, relatable to me. It was heartstrings-tugging, subtle yet passionate, earnest, rousing😭

A central female character and her relationships through college and later a time jump into her 40s, we first experience the intensity of her feelings in her youth: intellectual stimulation as she studies and writes, reverence for her 2 peers in her 17th-century Lit class, charged sexual tension between the 3 of them. Later we witness the push and pull of these relationships, her grief in the premature losses, the reunions that bring the past back into the present. The story chronicles the familiar experience of losing connections from distance, time and misunderstandings, and the regret, question of What If, and grief that come with it. Although sad it also celebrates enduring love - how we love our friends, our partners, even those we’ve lost or separated from, even if the love morphs and evolves.

I gasped a couple times, had to put the book down a couple times. It’s a beautiful story of a life. Thank you for the ARC- I hope others love it as much as I did!!

Lily King is a God-Tier author for me and this book did not dissuade me of that opinion for even a sentence. My only complaint is that I already want more. Have thought of nothing but this book since I finished. It's a book and a story that just nestles in to your soul.

Lily King is a beautiful writer with clear, succinct, and poetic prose that puts you squarely in the head of the narrator. Starting in college where she meets two brilliant men in her 17th-century Lit class (Sam and Yash) and continuing through relationships and family to a surprising ending, our narrator’s perceptions, reactions, feelings, and actions (or inactions) are bluntly on display as friendships, love, passion, loss, and eventual reckoning twirl around in the procession that becomes a lived life.

I can’t quite put my finger on why I like her writing so much — it isn’t overly emotional, and yet it feels so real. Even while telling us what is in our narrator’s mind (I’m not sure we ever get her real name, though the guys nickname her Jordan), it feels like she herself is not really sure of what is happening, or even what she wants to have happen. I guess I like that she captures the (constant) confusion of real living in a way that most authors don’t. She also thinks about and discusses things that I find interesting — philosophical musings, literary analyses, human moral behavior, even some speculative fiction style ruminations. The story was poignant, beautiful, essential, sad, and unpredictable.

Really loved this story. Made me feel every emotion, which I like when I read. Beautiful story. Writers and Lovers was good but I enjoyed this one even more.

One of the best books I read this year, so far. I had read and liked, but not loved King's previous books so I wasn't sure how I would feel about this one but I really loved every moment I spent with this story. I loved the characters and I loved the writing. I loved the characters' journeys. I loved the ache that lived at the core of the story and in each character. I loved how joy and sorrow could live side by side in this story. I loved how it can be full of both hope and heartache.

I cannot recommend this one enough.

with gratitude to netgalley and Grove Press for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

. Lily King is a seasoned author and yet this is the first of her works I’ve picked up. HEART THE LOVER is her latest and having gobbled this up in a few sittings, consider me a newly converted fan!

Comprised of three parts, we follow Casey as an aspiring writer in college where she becomes tangled up in the attention of fellow students Sam and Yash. 20 years later, Yash visits Casey for the first time since college. And finally, all three meet again for one final time. I’ve deliberately kept this vague,and don’t want to spoil the plot for anyone! But trust me, it’s good.

I think what won me over most with this is that it’s a love story while still feeling literary with a rich, aching drama that felt like real life. It’s a relatively brief novel and I initially worried Casey and Yash in particular would be kept at a distance, but the writing is so beautiful that I was soon invested in their sliding doors interactions throughout their lives. That ending was so emotional and heartbreaking

One of my avid reader friends gifted me two books by Lily King a few years ago and she's been a writer on my radar ever since. I currently have a book hangover after finishing

Heart the Lover. King has a gift for depicting human emotions and relationships as they grow, develop and change over time. We follow three characters from the end of their college years through their mid-40s as they fall in and out of love and friendship with one another and others, They are complex characters who have their own flaws and make some choices that hurt others, but they are also very human.

This book was an emotional rollercoaster (in a good way) and King somehow skillfully ended the book in a way that I felt was uplifting and heartbreaking simultaneously. Wow.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for this e-arc.

4 stars

I loved Lily King’s WRITERS AND LOVERS so I was excited to get a copy of this, and while I didn’t think this short book was as good as that one, I still enjoyed it.

The unnamed narrator (this is done is a slightly annoying way….you’ll see) meets roommates Sam and Yash while in college. They are more intellectual than she and she steps up her game to match them. We follow her through the remainder of her time in college, then immediately thereafter, then in several episodes through her adult life when the past returns to haunt her present.

I know this is a rather vague description of the story but I really don’t want to give anything away. It’s a short book, and it’s good, a nice love story which goes into what happens when things go wrong but, underneath, love remains.

A nostalgic novel, more than a coming-of-age but rather a coming-of self story, an exploration of the ways that relationships can impact your life and your self knowledge. Our narrator allows us in her head but does not reveal all, keeping the reader surprised by revelations that feel earned. I could not put down this book and finished in one day!

I love Lily kings writing! I have read one other book by her, and I was obsessed! This book is amazing, and I’m so lucky to have got my hands on this arc! This book was amazing!

I read this in two days. I would’ve read it in one if I didn’t had other things to do.
I was expecting to feel big feelings, but I wasn’t prepared for the emotional journey this book took me on.
Lily King has a way of writing that is so, so beautiful without being to lyrical or adorned. I think she writes very human. I’m always fully convinced her characters are actual, living people. That makes me care for them so much more. This also means I suffer terribly when she does what she does to them. I had to read the last 20% of this book through tears, actually sobbing out loud. But I loved every second of it.

I read Lily King's Writers and Lovers some years ago and was excited to see that she came out with a new novel. One thing I loved about Writers and Lovers is how King writes about literature--I actually picked up quite a few books through her writing. Heart the Lover is no exception to that as the protagonist is also a literature buff, and I really can't go into that more without giving away too much of the plot.

To be honest though, I didn't find the tagline that intriguing. I don't find the prospect of love triangles that interesting (although I did laugh a bit at the mention of "throples" later on in the book) and I do agree with some of the criticisms that some of the characters are not that well-developed. But Jordan herself is fully realized and I felt her pain at numerous points throughout the story. The talk she gives in Iceland about how great books intensifies your own experiences is so true, and that's how this story made me feel by the end.

Loved! Devoured it in a day. I did not expect the twists and turns, but still loved them and thought they were all so well developed.

Oh, my heart... let me just gather my weeping mess of a self off the floor, and I will share my thoughts. ----- Okay. Lily King has done it again, and Heart the Lover is my new favorite of her books. I've come to associate her with rich academic settings and emotionally complex characters. What I didn't expect was to be gutted by this latest release, and make no mistake... I loved every minute of it. ⁣
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Heart the Lover is a coming-of-age narrative told in three parts. Part one immerses the reader in the academic world as we follow Casey ("Jordan"), Sam, and Yash and their complicated relationship dynamics during their university years. Each of these characters was so complex, so real that they utterly popped off the page. ⁣
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Parts two and three take place 20+ years later when fate brings them back together. Without going into too much detail, I will say that I really appreciated how this novel was constructed. It allowed me to dive deep into these characters and then revisit them down the road when they've gained maturity and life experience. It felt full circle. It also served to sharpen the emotion in this story, making it an achingly beautiful and poignant read. It's been a while since I've been so completely consumed by a book... or so affected, for that matter. Thank you, Lily King, for putting the gorgeous upcoming Heart the Lover out into the world.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the free eARC of this book in exchange for a honest review! I was truly thrilled to receive an early copy of Lily King’s newest work, and it ended up being one of my favorites this year.

I put off writing this review for so long because I knew I did not have the words to express how much I loved this book and how deeply it moved me.

I saw another reviewer call this a “one sit, audible sob, beautiful book” and I really don’t have a better way to describe it than that. This floored me. We see the reverberations of our choices in youth come back decades later for our narrator, and it is both poignant, moving, and heartbreaking all at once. I just thought this was done with so much skill and grace.

Without giving anything away, the subject matter of the end in particular was so visceral for me that I felt like I was in the room with the characters. So many reflections on life, the setting and place transported me right back to college, the dialogue is spot on, the characters are lived in, real, flawed. Everything felt so intentional here, not a sentence out of place. Even the title was a stroke of brilliance.

I think this is King’s best work yet and I will continue to proclaim this - I truly wish it was longer!!! I stayed up late to finish and by the end I couldn’t see through my tears. I think this one will be a huge hit this fall. For the first time in years, I plan to reread this book once I can get a physical copy in my hands. A triumph, a shining 5 stars. Thank you Lily King!