Heart the Lover

This was a weird reading experience, because I loved the writing, but I mostly hated what the words were saying. I don’t remember much about Writers and Lovers beyond the fact that I enjoyed it. But I imagine it must have had something to do with King’s prose, because that was by far the best quality of Heart the Lover. It’s bright and airy and flows smoothly.

However, even as a fan of classic literary fiction, I found the literary name-dropping unnatural and off-putting, the story forced, and the characters surprisingly bland. Maybe I just didn’t have the kind of identity-shaping college experience this book is built around, but I could not understand the dynamic between Yash, Jordan, and Jordan’s family in the second half. It’s hard to say much more without getting into spoilers, but towards the end it felt like a lot of manufactured tragedy meant to give the book more literary weight than it had earned. Underneath it all, the story leaned pretty heavily on familiar romance tropes like poor communication and a man who never really grew up.

Book author: Lily King