Heart the Lover by Lily King is an interesting novel that tells the first-person story of a main character through decades of her life.
In the fall of her senior year of college, the narrator meets two other students, close friends Sam and Yash. They nickname her Jordan and she starts dating Sam, with a convoluted and often stormy relationship between the two.She and Sam break up and she later starts a relationship with Yash. The two of them go to visit Yash's family in Tennessee and she goes to Paris for a job. He flies there for an extended visit, they have an amazing time together, and Yash receives a job offer in Paris. He decides to go back to America, and the two of them are to then live in New York City. All their plans are made, and then when she arrives in New York, she learns that he hasn't come, rather has gone to Atlanta to move in with Sam.
The book jumps forward in time to her as a married adult with two kids, one of whom suffers from seizures and debilitating pain and has made the choice to have a high-risk surgery to get better. She hears from Sam, who tells her Yash is dying, and she flies to see him along with Sam, his family, and Yash's family. She and Yash express how much they mean to each other and she tells Yash that she had his baby twenty-seven years ago and gave her up for adoption. Her contact information was left in case the daughter ever decides to get in touch, and then she could tell her daughter about Yash.
She leaves the hospital around the time Yash goes unconscious and goes for her son's surgery, landing and receiving a message from Sam that Yash died. It's kind of a lovely book about relationships over time.
