Emma's TOP 5 in 2025 | Heart the Lover - Lily King

Emma says... Oh my days - I LOVED this book! Lily King is such a superb writer, crafting love sotires for people who don't read romance novels. A beautifully told, believable and relatable story about first loves, lifelong loves, the mistakes we make when we're afraid, literature, books and grief. With plenty of wry humour and sadness, cannot recommend highly enough.

--

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.