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Book Reviewed by: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 brings 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.
Excerpt
Heart the Lover
You knew I'd write a book about you someday. You said once that I'd dredged up the whole hit parade minus you.
I'll never know how you'd tell it.
For me it begins here. Like this.
The professor is holding up two neon-orange pieces of paper.
'Despite its vulgar packaging,' he says, waving a page in each hand like a flagman at Daytona, 'I feel compelled to read this one aloud.'
The assignment had been to write a contemporary version of Bacon's essay 'History of Life and Death.' I'd waited till the last minute to write it. The only paper we had in the house was this thick stuff left over from our Halloween party. And it wasn't easy, feeding that cardstock into my typewriter.
The professor doesn't read it as much as perform it. He gives it far more life and humor than I imagined it had.
There are two smart guys in the class. They sit up front together and I see only the backs of their heads, one with coppery brown hair and the other with a thick black ponytail. The ...
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (5/7/2026)
I've just finished Heart the Lover by Lily King, which was great.
-Sharon_G
Women Prize for Fiction longlist 2026
...ava Republic Press) https://womensprize.com/library/kingfisher/ Kingfisher by Rozie Kelly (Saraband) https://womensprize.com/library/heart-the-lover/ Heart the Lover by Lily King (Canongate)
-Anne_Glasgow
2026 first quarter besties
...ezine_preview_number/17444/chain-gang-all-stars Chain Gang All-Stars by https://www.bookbrowse.com/reviews/index.cfm/book_number/5086/heart-the-lover Heart the Lover by Lily King https://www.bookbrowse.com/reviews/index.cfm/book_number/5178/partially-devoured Partially Devoured by Daniel Kraus (I suspect https://www.bookbrowse...
-kim.kovacs
What’s the last book you spent money on, what format was it in, and why did you choose it?
I bought Lily King's Writers and Lovers in audiobook format. I'd recently completed her Heart the Lover , and discovered it was both a prequel and a sequel to Writers and Lovers (the earlier of the two). I wanted to fill in the gap in the protagonist's life.
-kim.kovacs
BookBrowsers ask Lily King, author of Heart the Lover
I'm only writing in my head right now. I can't say more. Thank you so much for inviting me to this chat!
-Lily_K
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (2/26/2026)
Let's see… I finished up a reread of https://www.bookbrowse.com/reviews/index.cfm/book_number/5076/buckeye Buckeye by Patrick Ryan for a book group. Really excellent fiction. Someone complained to me some time ago that there aren't that many "normal books" getting published anymore, that everythi...
-kim.kovacs
Lily King, author of Heart the Lover, will be here for a Q&A!
Just a reminder that Lily King, author of six novels including https://www.bookbrowse.com/reviews/index.cfm/book_number/5086/heart-the-lover Heart the Lover , will be visiting us here starting tomorrow. Once the discussion opens, click here to join .
-kim.kovacs
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (2/19/2026)
I enjoyed "Everything Is Tuberculosis" last week and found that I am becoming a huge John Green fan. I should be done with the very sad "Memorial Days" by Geraldine Brooks by tomorrow. I believe "Heart the Lover" by Lily King is next in the stack.
-Anthony_Conty
Ask the Author mug winners
Congrats to @Michelle_H , our latest BookBrowse mug winner! She was chosen at random from the members who very kindly stopped by the Q & A area to ask our visiting author, Maria Reva, questions about her work. Thank you very much to all who participated, it's very much appreciated. If you didn't ...
-kim.kovacs
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (1/8/2026)
I just started reading, Heart the Lover, by Lily King. It pulled me in immediately. I've truly enjoyed her other books, and after the acclaim this one has received, and my initial experience, I think this one will be fantastic as well.
-Elizabeth_L
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (1/1/2026)
I'm reading Vigil by George Saunders and what a wild ride! Last week I started my reading year with Heart the Lover by Lily King, and now what to reread Writers and Lovers.
-Evonne_Benedict
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (11/20/2025)
I'm looking forward to starting Lily King's Heart the Lover . It's gotten a lot of buzz and I liked Writers and Lovers very much so I hope my expectations aren't too high. I just finished The Irish Goodbye for Book Browser First Impressions. I'll be writing a review so for now will just say that ...
-Vicki_F
Heart the Lover opens in a college classroom on a New England campus in the late 1980s. Our unnamed narrator is in her senior year, and her life takes a sharp turn the day that one of her essays is admiringly read aloud to the class by her 17th-century-lit professor, capturing the attention of the "two smart guys" of the class, intellectual hotshots Sam and Yash, who soon invite the narrator into their cossetted world. The college-era chapters involve an intense flurry of dating, miscommunication, rivalry, attraction, but also real connection and love. King further attempts to track the thrill of an expanding mind, an intellectual coming of age through a deep engagement with writing and literature. The final two sections of the novel revisit certain relationships many years later, and for this reader these sections are slightly less compelling. One reason is that a crucial plot point hinges on fairly simple miscommunication, but if anyone can wield that weathered trope with dignity, it's Lily King...continued
Full Review
(945 words)
(Reviewed by Danielle McClellan).
Emma Straub, New York Times bestselling author of This Time Tomorrow
Lily King has written another masterpiece. This book overflows with her brilliance and her heart. We are so lucky. Ruth Ozeki, author of the Women's Prize for Fiction winner The Book of Form and Emptiness
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.
I should start by letting you know that I am a gamer of the decidedly antiquated sort. I grew up in a family that often played table games together, and although my siblings have all moved on to far more sophisticated digital gaming, I have remained analog and still adore an old-fashioned board or card game.
So, along with my literary interest in the Lily King novel Heart the Lover, I was intrigued by one of the central recurring elements, the card game Sir Hincomb Funnibuster, which provides the novel with its name. The main characters play Sir Hincomb Funnibuster in college, and it pops up again in later sections of the book. In this game, according to the narrator, the various suits represent different families, and "every king is the...
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