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Heart the Lover

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Heart the Lover

By: Lily King
Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
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About this listen

“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 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.

©2025 Lily King (P)2025 Canongate Books Ltd Genre Fiction Literary Fiction
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Goodness I am Balling my eyes out. Beautiful and moving. Beautiful narration and moving story.

Beautiful and moving

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What an incredible book! The people we meet, the ones we love, the choices and decisions we make and how it all ends - an age old story so beautifully written. I was an emotional wreck by the end which is very rare. I loved it!

Exquisite!

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Exquisitely written, beautiful characters a love story across the decades. Themes of loss and distance.

A tender heart aching love story

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This one follows Jordan, who gets caught up in this intense college friendship/love-triangle with Sam and Yash. Late night conversations, intellectual vibes, and feelings no one actually says out loud. Decades later, living a very different life, when the past basically shows up on her doorstep and forces her to look at everything she tried to bury.

And honestly… it's a bit poetic, romantic, and devastating. The writing really is beautiful with lingering moments that feel painfully human and real.

Whilst I think the characters were acting their age throughout the book I just felt they had zero communication ability. Everyone in this book is thinking deeply, remembering, longing, analysing, but actually saying how they feel? Nope.

That said, it is an overall moving, tender story rich with emotional depth, and beautifully reflective with themes of longing, regret, growing up, and revisiting old wounds.

The Narration was done really well which is probably why I was able to finish the book

Beautifully heartbreaking

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Over-wrought, pretentious, a thin work overall. The writing is cheesy and the ideas are immature. Just hated it! Not “literary” fiction at all. Just modern romance fairytale stuff.

Extremely Bad

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