Lily King Revisits First Love's Lingering Cost
First love, time and regret give this Lily King novel its reflective shape. The interesting question is not simply romance, but how memory keeps changing desire long after the original relationship has ended, softening some truths and sharpening others.
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Heart the Lover
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Lily King Revisits First Love's Lingering Cost
First love, time and regret give this Lily King novel its reflective shape. The interesting question is not simply romance, but how memory keeps changing desire long after the original relationship has ended, softening some truths and sharpening others.
- Book Synopsis
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SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2026 AN INSTANT NEW YORK 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.
Ideal for readers who:
- Seek literary romance about first love remembered across a lifetime.
- Appreciate campus intensity, friendship triangles and the ache of roads not taken.
- Respond to novels where time changes the meaning of desire.
- Prefer love stories that are thoughtful, regretful and emotionally exact.
- About The Author
- Lily King is the New York Times bestselling author of six novels, including Euphoria, Writers & Lovers and Heart the Lover, and the story collection Five Tuesdays in Winter. Her work has won numerous prizes and awards, including the Kirkus Prize, the New England Book Award for Fiction, the Maine Book Award for Fiction, a MacDowell Fellowship and a Whiting Award. She lives in Portland, Maine. lilykingbooks.com @lilykingbooks
- Product Details
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- ISBN
- 9781837265527
- Format
- Paperback
- Publisher
- Canongate, (30 April 2026)
- Number of Pages
- 249
- Weight
- 207 grams
- Language
- English
- Dimensions
- 198 x 129 x 16 mm
- Categories: