Heart the Lover

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2026
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

'Touching, thoughtful, a deeply affecting love story about time and regret' DAVID NICHOLLS
'Steeped in yearning, melancholy and the reckoning with mortality that must come to us all . . . King's writing still pierces you' The Times
'Exploring how first love shapes a lifetime, here is a novel of piercing clarity' Independent
'Beautifully written . . . I was hooked from the first page' Daily Mail

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.

Lily King grew up in Massachusetts and received her B.A. in English Literature from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and her M.A. in Creative Writing from Syracuse University. She has taught English and Creative Writing at several universities and high schools in this country and abroad.

Lily’s first novel, The Pleasing Hour (1999) won the Barnes and Noble Discover Award and was a New York Times Notable Book and an alternate for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Her second, The English Teacher, was a Publishers Weekly Top Ten Book of the Year, a Chicago Tribune Best Book of the Year, and the winner of the Maine Fiction Award. Her third novel, Father of the Rain (2010), was a New York Times Editors Choice, a Publishers Weekly Best Novel of the Year and winner of both the New England Book Award for Fiction and the Maine Fiction Award. Lily's new novel, Euphoria, was released in June 2014. It has drawn significant acclaim so far, being named an Amazon Book of the Month, on the Indie Next List, and hitting numerous summer reading lists from The Boston Globe to O Magazine and USA Today. Reviewed on the cover of The New York Times, Emily Eakin called Euphoria, “a taut, witty, fiercely intelligent tale of competing egos and desires in a landscape of exotic menace.”

Lily is the recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship and a Whiting Writer's Award. Her short fiction has appeared in literary magazines including Ploughshares and Glimmer Train, as well as in several anthologies.

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

"Lily King is an exceptionally good writer . . . vivid, moving and witty. . . King's novel got me straight in the heart" ― Guardian

"The novel is steeped in yearning, melancholy and the reckoning with mortality that must come to us all . . . It can also be very funny . . . it's a celebration of fiction and how writing can help us to work through tumultuous feelings . . . even as she lets us see how she pulls the strings and evokes our response, King's writing still pierces you" ― The Times

"A triangle charged with secrecy, longing, uncertainty . . . Exploring how first love shapes a lifetime, here is a novel of piercing clarity" ― Independent

"King is a master of sexual tension, of the slow build, of gratification torturously delayed. In this respect, Heart the Lover is her best work yet . . . The long-delayed revelations, like the tears, come fast and hot" ― New York Times

"Beautifully written . . . I was hooked from the first page" ― Daily Mail

"One of the sharpest observers of love, relationships and the human condition writing today . . . an accessibly erudite three-act tale of paths not taken and loves misaligned. Equal parts witty, wise and full-box-of-tissues heartbreaking, Heart the Lover is hands down one of the emotionally uplifting stories you'll read this year" ― Marie Claire

"King's language is pared back, her sentences uncluttered, but the novel is studded with nuance . . . a gratifying portrait of a young woman learning to take her writing seriously . . . this is a gorgeous, hopeful, life-affirming novel" ― Literary Review

"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

"A tender, devastating exploration of first love, betrayal and the fateful choices we make at pivotal moments in our lives . . . With lyrical prose and emotional depth, Lily King delivers a beautiful tale of love's enduring imprint that lingers long after the final page" ― Woman