Heart the Lover by Lily King

 

Softcover version

Our narrator understands good love stories - their secrets, their highs and free falls. But her greatest love story, the one she lived, never followed the rules.

She was in her senior year of college when star students Sam and Yash swept her into an intoxicating world of academic fervour, rapid-fire banter and raucous card games. Their lives became quickly intertwined - with friendship but also with unpredictable passions and the intimations of first love.

Decades later, she is a successful writer, living a comfortable life with her husband and children, when a surprise visit brings the past crashing into the present, forcing her to confront the decisions and deceptions of her youth.

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Heart the Lover

Author : Lily King

First Published Year : 2025

Language : English

Pages : 246

Genre : Literary Fiction, Coming of Age, Romance

Age Recommendation : 17+ (minor sexual content)

I was in the mood for reading a page-turner. Despite my long list of to-be-read books in my library, I decided to check out Heart the Lover, just because it looked like a page-turner kind of novel. And yes, it took me only 3 days to finish, which is quite fast for my record.

Our narrator is a senior college girl majoring in literature. She is so unique that she attracts the attention of the star boy, Sam. Swept away by Sam’s coolness and bright mind, the girl just follows the stream. Though they didn’t talk much, walking together to the next class, waiting in the corridor during the intermission, and having serious exchanges about their literature choices made her reciprocate Sam’s feelings.

Then after their date, Sam invites the girl to his “house,” a really beautiful house belonging to a professor who asked Sam to take care of it while he is away. Yash and Ivan, Sam’s best friends, also live there. On the first day the girl visits the house and meets the other boys, they call her “Jordan,” after Jordan Baker from The Great Gatsby.

Sam is a devout Christian, raised in a religious family, and applies the values of religion in his daily life. Meanwhile, Jordan is not. She was raised in a broken family and must work hard to get her education. But Jordan is always bottling up her feelings. She has a deep fear that someone will leave her if she shows her real (or too much) emotion. When Sam treats her badly, she just forgives him, even though his apology is not genuine.

Maybe it is because Jordan enjoys staying in Sam’s house. Not only is it a shelter that keeps her warm during winter, but the banter, night games, and exchanges of references with the other boys make her days more colorful.

When Jordan finally breaks up with Sam, she misses her days in that house, especially her conversations with the calm, kind-hearted Yash. But not until Sam is graduating do Jordan and Yash start talking again, and later become lovers.

Their relationship feels perfect. They love each other so much, and they are able to talk about anything. But the shadow of Sam’s approval is always getting in their way.

Later, in Part II, we skip more than 20 years ahead, and the POV changes to the second person, with Yash as “you.” Then, 7 years later, the POV goes back to the first-person narrator in the present time.

At first, I thought I was reading British literature. The “smart” exchanges between Jordan and Sam or Yash. The author really builds the conversations nicely to reveal Jordan’s subtle emotions (remember, she is the one who bottles up her feelings). It gives off the vibes of Sally Rooney crossed with David Nicholls.

There is also a scene where Jordan loses an acquaintance, a girl from Iran who is murdered by her boyfriend. Sadly, the college tries to cover it up, and Jordan suspects it is because she is a foreigner. Sometimes, Jordan remembers her and feels sad. The author doesn’t tell us exactly what Jordan is feeling, but we can feel the emotions—the sadness and fear of being killed at the hands of someone close to her. Or maybe it is just my deduction, because it also feels like a passing story since the author leaves that storyline loose.

Then I entered the second part and got confused about why the POV suddenly changed. In fact, we cannot skip a word while reading this book. The author keeps dropping seemingly random pieces of information or small clues that may not make sense at first, but become meaningful later. 

But my own problem is that there are so many literary references sporadically spread throughout this book. Jordan and Yash love to use book references to explain their feelings, and muggle-me barely knows any of the books mentioned. I am too lazy to check every book reference just to understand what they are really talking about. So, I skipped them whenever they got too long.

And my biggest let-down is Part III. What I thought was a smart and heavy literary fiction suddenly became more like popular fiction to me, because Lily King used “the safest plot” to resolve their problem. I cannot tell you what the safe plot is because it would be a big-fat spoiler. But if only the author had chosen a different route, maybe this book would have been 100–150 pages longer and stayed true to its ambitious intent from the beginning. Funny thing is, this part is actually a real page-turner compared to the other parts.

Also, one more thing: the more-than-20-year time skip is too long for me because suddenly, I feel like Jordan is an entirely different person in her middle age. I don’t know how she got there—a housewife, a happy family, and an established career. It feels like I invested in young Jordan, and then I won a lottery of “look-perfect-life” Jordan.

Though later, I learned that Lily King’s Writers & Lovers actually fills in part of that huge time gap. I haven’t read it yet, so perhaps this is why I feel like there is a missing chapter in Jordan’s life. But as a standalone reading experience, I still found the transition too abrupt.

Thus, I have mixed feelings. It is definitely a good book: the angst, the conversations, the melancholy feeling (mostly carried by Yash), the hint-don't-tell-approach,  and the genuine love story. But I wish the author had chosen a different way to resolve their entangled love story. Yet still, my thirst for a page-turner has been quenched. So, I guess I got what I came for.