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

A BEST BOOK OF 2025: TIME Magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, 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
Longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction
Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize

A BEST BOOK OF 2025: TIME Magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, 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
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

"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 . . .

About the Author

Lily King is the New York Times bestselling author of six novels, including Euphoria and Writers & Lovers, and the story collection Five Tuesdays in Winter. Her work has won numerous prizes and awards, including the Kirkus Prize, the New England Book Award for Fiction, the Maine Book Award for Fiction, and a Whiting Award. Her books have been translated into twenty-eight languages. She lives in Portland, Maine.