By Kavita Mistry
by Cathryn Conroy (Dublin, Ohio): This is a love story that doesn’t follow the rules of a love story—as in, girl meets boy, girl and boy fall in love, girl and boy suffer a broken relationship, girl and boy reconcile…and live happily ever after. Instead, this is a love story that is raw, passionate, (very!) sexy, and impossible to stop reading.
But it breaks all the rules. It’s brilliant!
Magnificently written by Lily King (who may just be my new favorite author), this is the story of college student Jordan, an English major and creative writer, who meets two young men her senior year who totally change her life: best friends and housemates Sam and Yash. In addition to encouraging her take herself, her studies, and her innate creativity more seriously than she has ever done before, Jordan first enjoys them both as dear friends but soon starts dating Sam. However, her real crush is for Yash and he for her. It’s a weird love triangle with lots of hurt feelings. She and Yash get together after Sam drops her, and a passionate, intense, wildly delirious love affair begins. They graduate and grow up and begin their lives, loving and hurting each other in ways that will mark them always. The choices they make as young lovers, often on the spur of the moment and based on feverish emotions, will forever alter the course of their lives.
This short novel—just 188 pages—is an intelligent and captivating celebration of young love, unbridled passion, forgiveness, and redemption. It is filled with joy and tragedy. It will wreck your heart and stir your soul. And you won’t want it to ever end.
But when it does end, there is a bit of a surprise, which you’ll only understand if you have already read Lily King’s “Writers and Lovers.”