Women's Prize Mini Reviews - Heart the Lover and Indignity

Title: Heart the Lover*

Author: Lily King

Rating: 2.75 stars / 5 stars 

*This post contains affiliate links. If you make purchases after using these links, I will earn a percentage of your purchase without any further cost to you. 

Favorite Quote: “It is an unpleasant feeling, having this anger at someone who is dying.” King, Lily. Heart the Lover. Grove Press, 2025, pg. 183. 

Review: So…here’s the thing. Writers & Lovers is one of my favorite books of all time. Definitely top 20. When I saw the Women’s Prize Longlist, my first thought was, yes. Reading slump be gone. I am about to feast.

Turns out, the best part of this book was the stunning cover. 

Let’s start with what’s working - as per usual, King is a master wordsmith. At a sentence level, this book is truly a masterpiece. It’s just the combination of those sentences that turn it into a mess.

So what’s not working? The plot is confusing. If this is a prequel/sequel to Writers & Lovers, then the timeline is confusing. The characters are mostly unlikeable, and not in a way that makes the book compelling to keep reading. Overall, it’s just…blah. Lily King has consistently been an instant-buy author for me. I’m not saying this book changes that…but it makes me consider being a bit more discriminating in how I spend my money.

About that Quote: King’s skill is always in her ability to capture emotions and distill them into their most raw, honest form. This quote, beyond everything else in the book, captures that power. 

Incomplete List of TWs: death, sick children

Title: Indignity: A Life Reimagined

Author: Lea Ypi

Rating: 4 stars / 5 stars 

Favorite Quote: “He knew that the only answer one could give to the question of how to cure a non-existent disease was to let the patient decide freely.” Ypi, Lea. Indignity: A Life Reimagined. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2025, pg. 41. 

Review: This book follows the author, a scholar, as she balances her academic pursuits and her goal of tracing the history of her grandmother through the records kept by the Albanian government - records she thought were destroyed. 

Ypi does an incredible job creating a narrative that reads like a novel. There’s mystery. There’s intrigue. And at the end, there’s a twist. 

She also creates a multi-timeline story that incorporates herself into the narrative. And finally, she ultimately asks readers to grapple with the questions: What is truth? What is history? Who gets to tell stories from the past? 

About that Quote: This quote really serves as a symbol for what occurs throughout the rest of the book. There is what is seen and what is felt. And then there is a reality that embodies both of those things…but isn’t quite fully aligned. 

Have you read Heart the Lover or Indignity? Share your thoughts below!