November 2025 Book of the Month - Emma recommends... Heart the Lover - Lily King

Emma recommends... I just love Lily King - she writes the messiness of love and loss so well, delivering affecting, believable, and relatable love stories for those of us who don't really read romance. Heart the Lover is all about first love, lifelong love, grief, regret, the mistakes we make when we are afraid, and - perhaps above all - the importance and impact of books and literature in our closest and most enduring relationships. Prepare to laugh and cry just make sure to read it - you won't be sorry!

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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.