Heart the Lover - by Lily King (Hardcover)

About the Book

""You knew I'd write a book about you someday." Our narrator understands good love stories-their secrets and subtext, their highs and their free falls. But her greatest love story, the one she lived, never followed the simple rules. In the fall of her senior year of college, she meets two star students from her 17th-Century Lit class: Sam and Yash. Best friends living off campus in the elegant house of a professor on sabbatical, the boys invite her into their intoxicating world of academic fervor, rapid-fire banter and raucous card games. They nickname her Jordan, and she quickly discovers the pleasures of friendship, love and her own intellectual ambition. Youthful passion is unpredictable though, and she soon finds herself at the center of a charged and intricate triangle. As graduation comes and goes, choices made will alter these three lives forever. Decades later, Jordan is living the life she dreamed of, and the vulnerable days of her youth seem comfortably behind her. But when a surprise visit and unexpected news brings the past crashing into the present, she returns to a world she left behind and is forced to confront the decisions and deceptions of her younger self. 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 story that celebrates love, friendship, and the transformative nature of forgiveness. 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"--

Book Synopsis

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

FINALIST FOR THE PEN/FAULKNER AWARD AND THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: TIME Magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Harper's Baazar, NPR, Vogue, Oprah Daily, People Magazine, USA TODAY, Literary Hub, Electric Literature, Kirkus Review, BookPage, Apple, Spotify, Amazon, Barnes & Nobles, PEN America, Chicago Public Library

"Lily King has written another masterpiece. This book overflows with her brilliance and her heart. We are so lucky." --Emma Straub, New York Times bestselling author of This Time Tomorrow

From the New York Times bestselling author of Writers & Lovers comes a magnificent and intimate new novel of desire, friendship, 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 and subtext, their highs and free falls. But her greatest love story, the one she lived, never followed the simple rules.

In the fall of her senior year of college, she meets two star students from her 17th-Century Lit class: Sam and Yash. Best friends living off campus in the elegant house of a professor on sabbatical, the boys invite her into their intoxicating world of academic fervor, rapid-fire banter and raucous card games. They nickname her Jordan, and she quickly discovers the pleasures of friendship, love and her own intellectual ambition. But youthful passion is unpredictable, and soon she finds herself at the center of a charged and intricate triangle. As graduation comes and goes, choices made will alter these three lives forever.

Decades later, the vulnerable days of Jordan's youth seem comfortably behind her. But when a surprise visit and unexpected news bring the past crashing into the present, she returns to a world she left behind and must confront the decisions and deceptions of her younger self.

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.

Review Quotes

Praise for Heart the Lover

Instant New York Times Bestseller
Finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award
Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction
Longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction
Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize
Shortlisted for the Indies Choice Book Awards
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: TIME Magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Harper's Baazar, NPR, Vogue, Oprah Daily, People Magazine, USA TODAY Literary Hub, Electric Literature, Kirkus Review, BookPage, Apple, Spotify, Amazon, Barnes & Nobles, PEN America, Chicago Public Library
#1 Indie Next Pick
#1 Library Reads Pick
A Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Read This Next Pick
A Laufey Book Club Pick
Zadie Smith's Elle.com Shelf Life pick for "the book that made me weep uncontrollably"

"Even I, who married my college sweetheart more than 40 happy years ago, read Lily King's new novel about what might have been in a state of blubbery longing . . . Heart The Lover is nostalgia distilled in black ink . . . King captures [her protagonist's] guileless sense of awe with just a dusting of parody that never grows silly or bitter . . . And what's particularly remarkable is how subtly King ages her narrator, preserving the kernel of that young woman's openhearted urgency in the older woman's complex voice . . . Only Lily King could tell a story so steeped in sorrow and so filled with hope."--Ron Charles, Washington Post

"King is a master of sexual tension, of the slow build, of gratification tortuously delayed. In this respect, Heart the Lover is her best work yet."--Lauren Christensen, New York Times Book Review

"Might be her best book yet . . . It stands as one of the most emotionally devastating and soulfully wise novels I have ever read . . . Like all of King's fiction, Heart The Lover is literary without pretension, emotional without maudlin sentimentality . . . heartrending, swoonily romantic, rigorously clear-sighted."--Priscilla Gilman, Boston Globe

"The latest masterpiece from the author of Writers & Lovers and Euphoria captures all the fevered obsession of 20-something romance--plus the deeper satisfaction of watching characters evolve beyond youthful hang-ups into fully realized adulthood."--Oprah Daily

"Enveloping and sly . . . building heft in a manner as mysterious as affairs of the heart."--Vogue

"Heart the Lover, like Writers & Lovers, feels at times as if it has been poured directly from the writer's soul onto the page. Its opening words flag an elegy--to a lost love and to youth . . . What starts as a campus novel leaps over decades to offer a more expansive view of life that spans the emotional gamut from elation to grief. (Keep tissues handy.)"--Heller McAlpin, Wall Street Journal

"Witty, insightful . . . King is able to employ the best kind of humor: amusing comments that are funny not because of what is said but because we can hear exactly how the characters are saying them."--Chris Hewitt, The Star Tribune

"Intensely moving . . . The structure of Heart the Lover is so ingenious, its emotional charge so compelling . . . [A] great triangular love story . . . about screwing up, wising up, finding yourself and realizing what you may have lost in the process."--Maureen Corrigan, NPR

"An intimate novel about formative first love, friendship, and the relationships that never leave us. This time-hopping story (of the perfect length, if you ask me!) sweeps you into the narrator's point of view with such visceral immediacy that it's easy to lose yourself in her memories. I canceled my plans to finish this gorgeous book, and I felt welcomely emo for a few days afterward."--Beck Harlan, NPR, "20 Books to Read With Your Book Club"

"King wholly captures the highs and the heartbreak of a passionate college romance . . . One of many lovely aspects of King's writing is her ability to convey yearning as an integral component of character . . . Has many individual sentences that glow like small gems, as with a character's sudden awareness of a landscape . . . Achingly poignant."--Carol Iaciofano Aucoin, WBUR

"Achingly, gloriously sincere. You could say to a fault, except it's clearly intentional. These are young people who want to fall into big feelings but also wonder if they can handle them at the same time."--Chicago Tribune

"[T]his affecting novel...questions whether a person can inhabit any moment other than the present."--New Yorker

"Suffused with the heady impermanence of first love, King's sixth novel is bittersweet, astutely observed, and thoroughly engaging."--People

"To read Lily King is to love her."--Harper's Baazar, "The 10 Best Books of 2025"

"Heart the Lover is the kind of immersive, overwhelming novel that makes you want to live inside it for days. It's both prequel and sequel to King's 2020 novel Writers and Lovers, but it stands on its own perfectly well if you haven't read its predecessor. (I haven't, and now I'm longing to.) Be warned: Once you've opened the covers, you aren't putting it down until you have to."--Vox, "The 10 Best Books of 2025"

"Witty, insightful . . . sharp, funny company . . . Jordan's first-person narration is so observant and distinctive that we feel like we know her"--Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Heart The Lover is alternately sweet and heartbreaking. King is so good at making a big impression with small details. There's never a word out of place nor any in excess, and yet she still manages to convey so much in the vignettes we see of the characters' lives. I think this book conveys so well how our lives can be shaped profoundly even by someone you only knew for a short period of time. But it's not just about knowing them, it's about them knowing you at that particular moment of your life, the way that version of you is preserved in their memory."--Mary Kate Carr, A. V. Club

"A short but incredible novel about first loves and how those loves hook your heart and don't let go. Who do we still love from our past? Who still loves us? An incredibly written but sparing work, Lily King's newest is a masterpiece of humanity and beauty. It will knock your socks off."--Kate Gibson, co-host of The Book Case

"Lily King's latest is a weeper, full of card games and witty banter and sure to tug at your heartstrings."--USA Today

"[Y]oung and intense and foolishly stubborn, this love triangle takes a redemptive turn that feels grounded, believable and quite beautiful. Jordan is a wonderful protagonist--funny, despairing, self-deprecating, lonely and determined to write novels. This is a satisfying, emotionally rich tearjerker, a book that just may make you sob out loud."--Bookpage (starred review)

"King's swoony story of love and literature, of paths taken and not taken, of the past selves we never truly leave behind, is quietly robust and nearly impossible to put down."--Booklist (starred review)

"King is a genius at writing love stories . . . Her mostly sunny version of the campus novel is an enjoyable alternative to the current vogue for dark academia. Tragedies are on the way, though, as we know they must be, as nothing gold can stay and these darn fictional characters seem to make the same kinds of stupid mistakes that real people do. Tenderhearted readers will soak the pages of the last chapter with tears. That college love affair you never got over? Come wallow in this gorgeous version of it."--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"[T]his book both delighted me intellectually and affected me on a profound emotional plane . . . It's the best love story I've read all year, and the day I finished reading it, I did something I have never done before: I put my copy into an envelope and sent it to my best friend, so that I'd have someone to talk to about it."--Emily Temple, Literary Hub, 15 Novels you Need to Read this Fall

"Beautifully written . . . I was hooked from the first page."--Daily Mail (UK)

"A triangle charged with secrecy, longing, uncertainty . . . Exploring how first love shapes a lifetime, here is a novel of piercing clarity."--The Independent (UK)

"Lily King has written another masterpiece. This book overflows with her brilliance and her heart. We are so lucky."--Emma Straub, New York Times 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

"Heart the Lover returns Lily King to what she does better than anyone these days: fast-moving romances that only slow unexpectedly for a sock in the gut."--Chicago Tribune

"The No.1 way to tell how much I am impacted by something? How hard it is for me to shut up about it. I have not shut up about this book."--Jackson Mississippi Clarion Ledger

Praise for Writers & Lovers

"With wit and what reads like deep insider wisdom, Ms. King captures the chronic low-level panic of taking a leap into the artsy unknown and finding yourself adrift, without land or rescue in sight." --Maureen Corrigan, Wall Street Journal

"I loved this book not just from the first chapter or the first page but from the first paragraph . . . The voice is just so honest and riveting and insightful about creativity and life." --Curtis Sittenfeld, London Evening Standard

"[D]elightful . . . [A]n unmistakable broadside against fiction's love affair with macho strivers, even -- or especially -- when layers of lyricism and tenderness coat their machismo. The emotional force of Writers & Lovers is considerable." --New York Times Book Review

"Wonderful, witty, heartfelt . . . Writers & Lovers is a funny novel about grief, and, worse, it's dangerously romantic, bold enough and fearless enough to imagine the possibility of unbounded happiness." --Washington Post

"This smooth, deliberate chronicle of creation keeps the men in their place and Casey firmly rooted at the center of her own story. Instead of casting her as a woman torn between archetypes of male creativity, Writers & Lovers portrays her as a woman in thrall to her own generative processes, a devotee to the art of (her own) attention." --Los Angeles Times

"King has created a woman on the cusp of personal fulfillment and strong enough to stand on her own, someone akin to Sally Rooney's Frances in Conversations with Friends . . . But King also situates Casey inside a variation of the which-lover-will-she-choose framework of, say, Nancy Meyers's film Something's Gotta Give . . . The novel is a meditation on trying itself: to stay alive, to love, to care. That point feels so fresh, so powerfully diametrically opposed to the readily available cynicism we've been feasting on . . . King wants us to keep trying, through whatever means necessary, to beat the odds." --Boston Globe

"This novel will become a defining classic for struggling young writers."--Vulture

"Writers & Lovers made me happy. Even as the narrator grieves the loss of her mother and struggles to make art and keep a roof over her head, the novel is suffused with hopefulness and kindness. Lily King writes with a great generosity of spirit." --Ann Patchett, author of Tom Lake

"Lily King is one of our great literary treasures and Writers & Lovers is suffused with her brilliance. It is captivating, potent, incisive, and wise, a moving story of grief, and recovering from grief, and of a young woman finding her courage for life." --Madeline Miller, author of Circe

"Gorgeous!" --Elizabeth Strout, author of Olive Kitteridge

"If you loved The Friend but wish it had had more sex and waitressing, get ready for Lily King's Writers & Lovers. Delicious." --Emma Straub, New York Times bestselling author of This Time Tomorrow

Praise for Euphoria

"Taut, witty, fiercely intelligent . . . King is brilliant." --New York Times Book Review

"Atmospheric and sensual . . . An intellectually stimulating tour de force." --NPR

Praise for Father of the Rain

"Surprising and wise . . . An absorbing, insightful story written in cool, polished prose right to the last conflicted line." --Washington Post

"King is a beautiful writer, with equally strong gifts for dialogue and internal monologue." --New York Times Book Review

"Haunting, incisive . . . King is brilliant." --Elle

"An excellent novel, sensitive and perceptive." --Chicago Tribune

About the Author

Lily King is the New York Times bestselling author of six novels--Heart the Lover, Writers & Lovers, Euphoria, Father of the Rain, The English Teacher, and The Pleasing Hour--as well as the story collection Five Tuesdays in Winter. Her work has won numerous prizes and awards, including the Kirkus Prize, the New England Book Award, the Maine Book Award, and a Whiting Award; has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Women's Prize, and the Story Prize; and has been longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. Her books have been translated into thirty-two languages. She lives in Portland, Maine.