Autumn is made for reading. And not just because shorter days and longer nights equals more time curled up in your favourite chair with your soon-to-be-favourite novel, but because it’s also the season when publishers unleash some of their biggest releases of the year. And so it proves to be. From a heartwrenchingly beautiful campus romance and sprawling multigenerational saga to tales of forbidden love and an eerily disquieting dystopia – this month’s list is a doozy.
Fans of King’s Writers and Lovers rejoice. While not being sold as a literary bedfellow to her 2020 novel, Heart the Lover takes us firmly back into that world. We meet our protagonist in college where she falls in with best friends and star students, Sam and Yash. The trio form a knotty and emotionally complex bond that swiftly develops into a classic love triangle – and we all know how those turn out. Or rather, we don’t, because King – one of the sharpest observers of love, relationships and the human condition writing today – is too good at what she does for that, elevating every page to create an accessibly erudite three-act tale of paths not taken and loves misaligned. Equal parts witty, wise and full-box-of-tissues heartbreaking, Heart the Lover is hands down one of the emotionally uplifting stories you’ll read this year.
