Heart the Lover
by Lily King
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Pub Date Oct 14 2025 | Archive Date Oct 03 2025
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Description
From the New York Times bestselling author of Writers & Lovers comes a magnificent and intimate new novel of desire, friendship, loss, and the lasting impact of first love.
'You knew I'd write a book about you someday'
Our narrator understands good love stories - their secrets, their highs and free falls. But her greatest love story, the one she lived, never followed the rules.
She was in her senior year of college when star students Sam and Yash swept her into an intoxicating world of academic fervour, rapid-fire banter and raucous card games. Their lives became quickly intertwined - with friendship but also with unpredictable passions and the intimations of first love.
Decades later, she is a successful writer, living a comfortable life with her husband and children, when a surprise visit brings the past crashing into the present, forcing her to confront the decisions and deceptions of her youth.
Written with the precision of poetry and the emotional tide of an epic, Heart the Lover is a celebration of literature and the life-long echoes of young love. 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.
Advance Praise
“Lily King has written another masterpiece. This book overflows with her brilliance and her heart. We are so lucky.”—Emma Straub, bestselling author of This Time Tomorrow
“Time moves like memory in Heart the Lover—urgent, intimate, elusive. What does it mean to carry a story you never get to finish? With breathtaking precision, Lily King writes about love that lingers and choices that haunt. I read it in a single, breathless sitting.” —Ruth Ozeki, author of the Women's Prize for Fiction winner The Book of Form and Emptiness
“Indescribably good. It is incredible that Lily has managed to tell such an epic love story in just 250 pages, and I emerged feeling ruined for all other books. I adored these characters and feel lucky to have known them. I’m in awe. A perfect literary love story.” —Florence Knapp, New York Times bestselling author of The Names
“I inhaled this novel in one breathless gulp, constantly asking myself, how is she doing it? How is she writing this tender, funny, deeply empathetic novel while also making it impossible for me to stop turning the page? Heart the Lover is a magic pill and Lily King is its virtuosic alchemist.”—Tahmima Anam, author of The Startup Wife
“Touching, thoughtful, a deeply affecting love story about time and regret.” —David Nicholls, author of One Day
“A tender and memorable novel about love, loss, and friendship that lifts and undoes you equally.” —Susie Boyt, author of Loved and Missed
Available Editions
| EDITION | Paperback |
| ISBN | 9781837265787 |
| PRICE | A$32.99 (AUD) |
| PAGES | 256 |
