Heart the Lover
Heart the Lover
Lily King
my review : ✮✮✮✮
Pick this book up if you’re in the mood for both exquisite storytelling and to break your own heart.
This book starts in the 1980s on a college campus. Our narrator is writing the story of her time on campus, meeting Sam and Yash in class, two brilliant college seniors, who bring her into their world. The book follows the tangled relationships between these three in college and beyond.
Anytime I review literary fiction, I feel wildly unqualified. Sharing how I feel about thrillers and romance feels second nature. Literary fiction, those character-driven stories with so much packed into a single sentence, sometimes makes it harder for me to parse out my feelings. I enjoyed this book; I think it’s excellent. The characters stirred something in me: at times I hated them, and at other times I loved them. Complex, nuanced, enjoyable. I’ve seen some discourse around this book being a romance novel disguised as literary fiction, and I disagree. This is literary fiction, this is a love story, this is not a romance novel. This book will make you feel, and think, and wish you’d maybe applied yourself more in college (just me?).
Heart the Lover is connected to the author’s other book, Writers and Lovers, which I have not read. I wish I had before this, as I think it would only have added to the experience.
you’ll love this book if you love:
Academic Stories
Love Triangles
Literary Fiction
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