Heart the Lover

You always knew I’d write a book about you.

Our narrator understands love stories—how they rise and crest, what they hide, what they reveal. But the greatest love story she lived refused to follow any script.

In the fall of her senior year, she meets Sam and Yash, two brilliant students from her 17th-Century Lit class. Best friends who share an elegant professor’s house off campus, they draw her into their heady world of intellectual fervor, fast-talking debates, and raucous card games. They christen her Jordan, and in their company she discovers the exhilaration of friendship, desire, and her own awakening ambition. But youthful intensity is volatile, and soon she finds herself at the center of a fraught and unforgettable triangle—one whose consequences will ripple far beyond graduation.

Decades later, Jordan believes the vulnerabilities of her youth are safely behind her. But when a surprise visit and shocking news reopen the door to her past, she is pulled back into the world she once fled. To move forward, she must reckon with the choices, illusions, and betrayals that shaped all three of their lives.

Written with Lily King’s signature wit, warmth, and emotional precision, Heart the Lover is a deeply affecting exploration of literature, forgiveness, and the transformative power of the bonds we form. Wise, indelible, and subtly linked to Writers & Lovers, it showcases King at the height of her artistry—one of our finest chroniclers of the human heart.