Review of Heart the Lover by Lily King

I've loved the other three books I've read by Lily King, but I didn't connect with the Heart the Lover characters and didn't believe in their decades-old deep ties to each other.

In the fall of our female narrator's senior year in college, she becomes friends with Sam and Yash, two vibrant young men in her literature class. They are housemates with each other and with another student named Ivan, and together they form a charming, complementary, intellectual trio. They nickname our main protagonist Jordan.

Although it likely seems clear to the reader that ultrareligious, mainly abstinent, guilt-ridden, and generally rigid Sam is not a healthy match for Jordan, they fall into a volatile relationship. But Jordan is more entranced by Yash, who acts oddly around other women but seems to be his naturally charming self around her.

I was engrossed by the tensions in this love triangle, and by Jordan's early relationship and her immersion in intellectual college student life. Then a significant amount of page time was dedicated to mentions of literature, literary figures, and philosophers, to the point that this all began to feel like distracting filler, rather than developing into relevant story elements. However, the exploration of the concepts of eternalism (the past, present, and future are equally real) and presentism (only the present moment exists) has bearing on Jordan's youthful choices and their (for me, larger than feels warranted) impact on the rest of her life.

Jordan's first relationship doesn't work, but the stakes are, appropriately, not extremely high. The next relationship is more passionate, more loving, more complicated, and more promising. When that love interest turns out to have a weak-boy disconnect between his stated intentions and his ability to make a commitment, the stakes are higher, and Jordan's shock at his abruptly flighty behavior is significant. I wanted to throttle these disappointingly flaky early twentysomething boys, and while it wouldn't work for the story, I wanted Jordan to cut them off forever. They can't be counted on, they're incapable of feeling mature feelings or honest communication, enough is enough, ugh.

There is a jump forward in time that made me immediately feel less connected to the characters and the years of their stories we weren't privy to, then Jordan has a poignant if largely unsatisfying reconnection with one of the boys (now a grown man), and finally some resolution and a difficult goodbye. While Jordan is sitting at a deathbed and eating with the family and friends of the dying man for multiple days, I was feeling for Jordan's husband, who is home in Maine caring for their gravely ill child and preparing for that child's very serious, hopefully pain-alleviating but possibly life-ending surgery. Time to get home, Jordan!

At the very end of the book, the character's name is revealed. This wasn't an aha moment for me--I found the big reveal puzzling and didn't realize that the name was the same as a character in another King novel, Writers & Lovers, published five years ago (I've read 500 to 600 books since then, and she wasn't a titular character, so I felt like it was an ambitious possibility that I would have connected the two too early if the character's name had been used all along. Interestingly, in that book, the main protagonist is a struggling writer who is drawn to two very different men.) I think if I had understood the interconnectedness of the stories up front, I would have felt positively that there were more layers here. As it was, I wanted more depth from the story but didn't feel it.

I received a prepublication version of this title, published September 30, courtesy of Grove Atlantic and NetGalley.

More from Lily King

Lily King is also the author of books I've loved including Five Tuesdays in Winter, Writers & Lovers, and Euphoria.