Writers & Lovers

by Lily King

While I found myself easily absorbed while I was reading Writers & Lovers, it didn’t stay with me for very long once I’d finished. The voice is appealing and the emotional stakes feel immediate, especially in its portrayal of ambition, grief, and financial precarity, but much of it faded quickly in retrospect. I appreciated Lily King’s sensitivity to the inner life of a struggling writer, and there’s a steady readability that makes the pages turn effortlessly. Still, for all its competence and warmth, it ended up feeling somewhat forgettable to me; one of those books that does its job in the moment, then quietly recedes.