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.
“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.”
—CHRISTOPHER BORRELLI, The Chicago Tribune
“Suffused with the heady impermanence of first love.”
—KIM HUBBARD, People Magazine
“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
“Enveloping and sly . . . building heft in a manner as
mysterious as the heart.”
—Vogue
Praise for Heart the Lover
“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 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