Love triangles aren’t normally my thing, but I did enjoy this one. Probably because it was never obvious which of them she was going to end up with.
The book starts off in the second person, but before we learn who she’s talking to, the book switches to first person and goes back in time to when “Jordan” first saw the person she’s talking to. It turns out she saw him with a friend of his, and that turns out to be an intentional misdirect.
“Jordan” first saw Sam and Yash in a class they had together, but it took a while for Sam to ask her out. Their date starts out kind of awkward, but when Sam brings Jordan home to the house he’s staying in with some other guys and the other guys show up, they all play a game called Sir Hinkle Funny-Duster and the date is saved. The game involves shouting out “Heart the Lover” at the right moment, hence the title.
We don’t get the narrator’s name until the very last line of the book. At first the guys call her Daisy because they call all their dates Daisy as a reference to The Great Gatsby.
“Jordan” is also an English major, so she picks up on the reference right away and is not pleased. It’s through later discussions that she earns the nickname “Jordan,” which is the name she goes by for the rest of the book.
She and Sam have a fairly tumultuous relationship. They break up and get back together, and I’m the kind of romantic who tends to think going back to the person you broke up with must mean there’s something real there. You’d think experience would have taught me differently, but there’s the real world, and then there’s fiction, and in fiction, I want my HEA.
This book does not have a HEA.
They break up again, and after a few months, she gets together with Yash. They also have a pretty intense relationship, but when they can’t agree on where to go after graduation, Yash bails. Just doesn’t show up to meet “Jordan” at the train station.
Yash doesn’t know (and even the reader doesn’t know until later in the book), but “Jordan” is pregnant with his child. She decides not to have an abortion, but also decides she’s not ready to be a mom, so she gives the child up for adoption.
She’s so mad at Yash for abandoning her that she doesn’t bother telling him about the baby until years later when he randomly shows up in her life.
By that point she’s married someone else and has two kids. She and Yash manage to become friends again, then his cancer comes back and this time it’s terminal.
Yash wants her with him at the end, and even Sam (who was angry about them getting together at first, but he got over it) and her husband agree she should be with him.
But the timing couldn’t be worse because one of their sons has brain tumors that give him seizures and they’re waiting to be told when and where they can get a surgeon to operate. She heads out to be with Yash anyway and eventually becomes convinced to tell him about their daughter so they can clear the air before he dies.
She cuts it close, but she does manage to fly back to be with her family in time for the surgery.
I didn’t love this book, but I think I liked it. It just hasn’t stuck with me the way a really good book tends to. I find it mostly forgettable, but there’s no denying it’s beautifully written, and I certainly sighed and raged and cried alongside “Jordan” throughout this book.
I haven’t read Writers and Lovers, so I can’t speak to how this book informs that book. I can say that I didn’t feel lost in this book without having read the companion.