Heart the Lover by Lily King
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, Jordan 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.
Review: As a senior, our narrator meets two students in class and falls into a relationship with Sam. But over time she finds herself in a complicated scenario where she moves on from Sam and is dating Yash. The two are passionately in love, but like many youthful loves, it falls apart. Decades later, our narrator is living a very different life but finds her past crashing back into her world.
I find it difficult to write a review for this book without giving away any spoilers. But this book is ultimately about what happens when you fall in love with someone who turns out not to be your person in the end. We can love someone and sometimes that still isn't enough. Much like life, the reader must follow along with our narrator as she travels through these relationships, unsure where each is going and what will stick.
While very much in the background of this book, this novel is such a tender ode to the narrator's marriage. Her husband is so kind and understanding of her, when he has very little reason to extend that kindness. He seems to deeply know and understand her and recognize that she needs this time and this closure, even when it involves his wife's feelings for another man and another relationship that preceded him.
This was a heartbreaking book with such a sad ending. Like life, it felt very tender and raw and sad but yet not too dark or tragic, despite the conclusion. In the end, our narrator is moving forward, returning to her life, hopefully with some more peace concerning her past.
Lily King writes in such spare prose and yet is able to pack such an emotional punch and a full story in less than 300 pages. This was a lovely and beautifully written story. This was well done on audio, and the narrator honored the emotional tenor of the story beautifully.
Stars: 4
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