Heart the Lover

Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2026, A Sunday Times Bestseller

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Heart the Lover

By: Lily King

Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman

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'You knew I’d write a book about you someday'

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.

Written with the precision of poetry and the emotional tide of an epic, Heart the Lover is a celebration of literature and the life-long echoes of young love. 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.

Lily KingRebecca LowmanCanongate Books

Genre Fiction

Literary Fiction

Emotionally Gripping

Heartfelt

Tear-jerking

Thought-Provoking

Inspiring

Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Emotionally Gripping Heartfelt Tear-jerking Thought-Provoking Inspiring

Critic reviews

"Touching, thoughtful, a deeply affecting love story about time and regret" (DAVID NICHOLLS)

"Lily King has written another masterpiece. This book overflows with her brilliance and her heart. We are so lucky" (EMMA STRAUB)

"Time moves like memory in Heart the Lover - urgent, intimate, elusive. What does it means 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)

"A tender and memorable novel about love loss and friendship that lifts and undoes you equally" (SUSIE BOYT)

"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)

"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)

"King is a genius at writing love stories . . . That college love affair you never got over? Come wallow in this gorgeous version of it"

"Praise for Lily King: ‘Lily King is one of our great literary treasures" (MADELINE MILLER)

"Lily King writes with a great generosity of spirit" (ANN PATCHETT)

"King is one of our finest cartographers of the human heart"

Most relevant

believe the hype - this is as good as everyone says. brutal but so viscerally real that I found myself searching if it was autobiography. it's razor sharp