07/09/2026
This is one of those books you finish and think, what the hell was the point?
As I was reading this I made two notes: fragmented, existential crisis.
It genuinely feels like an existential crisis in book form. A deep exploration of the human experience - how we move through the world, how we interact with one another, how we perceive one another.
Something I found particularly interesting is the way this story moves through time. The past is fragmented, told through memories and moments, with years often passing in a single sentence. Meanwhile, the present unfolds over days, much more slowly. It felt like a metaphor for life itself, how so much of it passes in the blink of an eye, while certain moments become completely unforgettable and seem to last forever.
I spent a decent chunk of time trying to unravel the theme of this novel and all I was left with was this … that we spend our lives believing we’re making deliberate choices and moving towards some kind of destination, when really we’re just made up of all our tiny choices, mistakes, missed opportunities and moments of chance.
There is no version of life where we get everything. You can love the life you’ve built and still wonder about the life you didn’t. You can be happy and still grieve something you’ve lost. You can make the “right” choices and still wonder what would have happened if you’d made different ones.
The characters in this story were so beautifully written. They’re flawed and contradictory and messy. They don’t exist simply to serve the story. They feel like real people. People who are trying to make sense of their own lives while inevitably misunderstanding parts of each other’s.
I don’t think Heart the Lover is really about what happens. It’s about what we do with what happened. How we remember it. How we give meaning to it. How we turn a collection of silly little choices and mistakes into a story about who we are. And maybe there isn’t actually a point to any of it. Maybe we’re just here, existing, loving people, losing people, regretting things, remembering things differently than they happened, and trying to make sense of it all before time runs out.
