The Book of Love

Reviews / Votes

'The Book of Love is an incredible achievement - a novel whose people and places feel so true to life that the magic that shimmers through the pages like grown-up fairy dust seems not just real but unquestionable. This modern-day The Master and Margarita will remain with you long after you have turned the last lush and visionary page.' -- Cassandra Clare By turns playful and harrowing, surreal and sagacious, replete with gods and other monsters, The Book of Love is an astonishing, gorgeous novel written with Link's unique wit, warmth and ability to get under your skin. -- Holly Black An eldritch Our Town that somehow manages to be both epic and intimate. Link's language is nimble and startling and goes down so easy. You won't realize you're drunk on this story until it's too late and you're careening from the spectacularly weird to the wildly funny to an aching grief almost too familiar to bear. A dizzying dream ride you will never forget. -- Leigh Bardugo What more can be said about Kelly Link, that has not been (breathlessly) said already? She is a sorcerer. She is our greatest living fabulist. There is no one like her. And The Book of Love is a luxurious, bewitching novel of exceptional beauty and power -- Carmen Maria Machado Reviewing The Book of Love feels like trying to describe a dream. It's profoundly beautiful, provokes intense emotion [and] offers up what feel like rooted, incontrovertible truths... So much of Link's work steps lightly, a tempering of the commonplace with vivid, delicate surprise. * New York Times * Link has made a modern myth, grand enough to capture all the agony and absurdity and radiance of love itself. This is one of those books that cuts your life in two: before you read it, and after. * Alix E. Harrow * A magical debut of life after life * The Guardian * Her writing itself might be a kind of ritual magic designed to draw you irresistibly in. Think The Master And The Margarita, or maybe a later season of Riverdale: everything is strange, anything is possible. Is it too obvious to say you'll love this book? * SFX, 5* * Link wraps a terrifying core of rusty razor blades in deceptive layers of charming, daffy quirkiness. It's a confection like no other: one you won't forget - or regret. * Cory Doctorow * Magnificently witty in ideas and narrative, sweeping in scale and execution, The Book of Love is an absolute feast of a story, ushering the reader along a path that is always sublime, often hilarious and frequently surreal, and at every single point absolutely rammed full of heart and truth. I am in love with Mo, Laura, Daniel and Suzanne, I want to take a trip to Lovesend, I want to see My Two Hands Both Knowe You play The Kissing Song at the Cliff Hangar, I want to read Caitlynn Hightower's novels, I want to grab coffee at What Hast Thou Ground? I could have kept reading this story far beyond the last page; I wish I could have lived it for real, just a little. -- Melinda Salisbury A masterpiece... The small-town world Link conjures in The Book of Love-one full of nuanced relationships between a large cast of characters, local history and cosmic mythology, and magic hiding in plain sight-is among the most detailed and immersive ever put to paper * Esquire * Reading this felt like entering a vivid fever dream, through the story themes of grief, love, family and identity are explored in a tender and beautiful way * Glamour * In The Book of Love, Link's debut novel, she revels in upholding and upturning the genre's conventions... the writing sparkles with wit and colour, and there is much camp weirdness and shimmering grandeur * The Spectator * A wholly absorbing journey that boasts the hallmarks of Link's shorter fiction while building out a robust cast of characters in the vividly rendered town of Lovesend. At its heart, Link's debut is exactly what the title suggests, a moving and deft exploration of the many ways 'love goes on even when we cannot' * BookList, starred review * The Book of Love is pure enchantment - a tale of love, death, magic and teenagers being teenagers, rich with fairy strangeness and told in sentences like jewels strung on a chain. A book to get lost in. -- Zen Cho A playful, ambitious story of magic erupting in the everyday, so vividly drawn * The Bookseller * Link has a genius for combining the mundane with the uncanny, diving into the dark currents where dreams grow and bringing up magic-encrusted jetsam, pearlescent ideas that coil and shock * Kirkus * Lovers of magical coming-of-age stories will find the protagonists' journeys compelling, while anyone who believes that love is the greatest magic of all will find the redemptive power of love (of all types) imbued in every single page * Library Journal * Like Gilmore Girls if written by Stephen King... Fabulous in all senses of the word * Irish Times * Link's prose is unmatched: she makes the world seem both more surreal, and more gorgeous at every turn. There is nobody writing like her: Link is truly singular * Sarah Maria Griffin, author of Other Words for Smoke * A playful, ambitious story of magic erupting in the everyday, so vividly drawn * The Bookseller * It's inventive, unputdownable and a ton of fun * People, Book of the Week * There it is: the acidic elixir that makes drinking up Link's work such an intoxicating treat. In her prose, matter becomes plastic, bodies melt, and the membrane separating reality from fantasy is beaten to airy thinness. * Washington Post * Haunting, immersive, and at times surpassingly beautiful * Locus Magazine * The Book of Love is, simply put, a magical, confusing, heartfelt, strange, wonderfully written novel that delivers everything fans of Link's short fiction expected while also packing a few surprises * NPR * The Book of Love... is going to delight [Link's] fans and win her new ones. It's about grief and love - and ancient griefs and loves - and it features the kind of magic and mythology that doesn't seem to be based in one tradition or lore but still feels familiar' * The British Fantasy Society * Every page is an absolute feast to the eyes. The Book of Love is a fabulous magical coming-of-age storywith all the absurdities, myths, and spells that make for an enchanting read. * Asian Age * The prose is diamond-sharp; it's hard to imagine Link ever writing a clunky sentence or a bad description... her characters feel like family: by turns lovable and enraging * The Guardian * Tolkein topped-up with Judy Blume; teen angst meets mysticism and mystery... With this terrific tome, Link proves that one of fiction's premier pithy storytellers is in it for the long stretch * The Herald * A veritable phantasmagoria that we can imagine a fair few grown-up former Harry Potter fans (and Buffy fans) lapping up * Book Munch * A great read * The Sunday Post (Dundee) * Delivers Link's style without compromise... a novel that's as magical and weird and ephemeral as any of her short fiction * ParSec * Full of Link's simultaneously sincere and tongue-in-cheek humour and imaginative, beautiful writing - at times, her prose will take your breath away - this book is never boring, and constantly surprises with what comes next * Interzone * A wild, compelling ride, full of fantastical twists and turns * Town & Country, Best Books of 2024 so far * Both bizarre and compelling, showcasing Link's talent for crafting unique stories * The Guardian Nigeria * Pulitzer Prize finalist Kelly Link's debut novel, The Book of Love, is a fantasy that tackles sibling rivalry, complicated teen friendships, and transcendent love. Nearly a year after high schoolers Laura, Daniel, and Mo die in a tragic accident, they are resurrected by a mystical being. The undead trio (along with another mysterious spirit) must complete a series of magical tasks in order to win a second chance at life. The catch: only two can remain in the land of the living, while the others will be sent back to the realm of the dead. The result is a page-turner that explores what it means to truly be alive. * Time Magazine * It's really about teenagers and love and music, buts it's a beautiful nod to ghosts and what it means to live your life. She's so smart and such an incredibly eloquent writer and he conjured magic in this way that makes it feel absolutely real. -- Michaela Kalowski