Heart the Lover by Lily King – 256 pages
Book Blurb:
In the fall of her senior year of college, she meets two star students from her 17th-Century Lit class: Sam and Yash. Best friends living off-campus in the elegant house of a professor on sabbatical, the boys invite her into their intoxicating world of academic fervor, rapid-fire banter and raucous card games. They nickname her Jordan, and she quickly discovers the pleasures of friendship, love and her own intellectual ambition. Youthful passion is unpredictable though, and she soon finds herself at the center of a charged and intricate triangle. As graduation comes and goes, choices made will alter these three lives forever. Decades later, Jordan is living the life she dreamed of, and the vulnerable days of her youth seem comfortably behind her. But when a surprise visit and unexpected news brings the past crashing into the present, Jordan returns to a world she left behind and is forced to confront the decisions and deceptions of her younger self.
My Review: 4.25 stars
Heart the Lover by Lily King made me so happy to have in my hot little hands. I loved that this book is at once a prequel and a sequel to the bestselling Writers and Lovers that came out in 2020. I didn’t realize until the ending once the main character’s real name is exposed.
This book is a college romance turned love triangle between three writing students. Jordan is the nickname given to her by Sam and Yash in honor of the Jordan in The Great Gatsby.
Relationships while on campus can be complicated and here, we see decisions being made by young minds that think they know everything. The book explores the current relationships as well as her present relationships as a grown adult with children.
The writing is superb, the story compelling and overall, a winner of a novel for me. It’s a short book that still packs a punch and will definitely keep you thinking about decisions you made while in college.
Quotes I liked:
What good is any other virtue without love?”
“You know how you can remember exactly when and where you read certain books? A great novel, a truly great one, not only captures a particular fictional experience, it alters and intensifies the way you experience your own life while you’re reading it. And it preserves it, like a time capsule.”
“I’m aware that I had ideas about the future that I hadn’t discussed with myself.”
“Love is not the weakness. People get in its way. People are weak and perilous, not love.”
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