Monday, Mar. 2, 2026--San Antonio
Heart the Lover by Lily King was named a top book of 2025 by at least 7 major sources. I enjoyed reading it so much that I finished it within 2 days. It's the story of the lives of 3 college friends with the main protagonist being a woman named Jordan who wants to become a novelist, came to the elite university on a tennis scholarship which she gave up during her first year, has been racking up loan debts while working one or two jobs at a time, and is NOT a part of the special literature program for top students which Kash and Sam (two best friends from school days in Knoxville) are. Kash notices Jordan in a class and encourages his friend Sam (who is not as outgoing, popular, and charming as Kash is) to ask her out. Eventually Sam does ask Jordan out and they begin a relationship that is hindered by the fact that Sam is a Southern Baptist who has made an oath to be sexually abstinent until marriage and whose parents are far more conservative and critical of others than he is. But the relationship develops based on what was called "everything but" in Jordan's high school--oral sex, OK; masturbation, OK; penetration, NOT OK. But as time passes it becomes obvious that Sam cannot escape the expectations of his family and that both Kash and Jorden are attracted to each other. The book covers a span of about 3 decades in which Sam never changes, Kash cannot escape the responsibility he feels to be Sam's best friend, Kash and Jordan start a relationship which they hide from Sam, Kash and Jordan break up after their relationship involved too much time apart and a failure by Kash to fully commit, Jordan moves on with her life feeling betrayed by both Sam and Kash, Kash becomes a lawyer instead of the novelist he wanted to be, Jordan becomes a successful novelist, Jordan and her husband are waiting for an important appointment for surgery that may save her son's life and will require them to be free to travel immediately to Houston when notice comes, and she gets call about a tragic situation that causes her to feel that she must make a temporary trip that brings all three of them back together because there is a secret that has been kept through all of these years. Because there is a large emphasis on literature topics during their college days that only majors in literature could find very appealing in such depth as they are covered and because of giant leaps in the story timeline that require the reader to figure out the new time and situation, I gave the book 4 stars out of 5, but the story was really an interesting one that was more entertaining than most books I have read lately.
