I thought that this book was heartfelt and did an excellent job of showing the grief that Natalie was dealing with. I will say that to me this book felt slow-paced and like nothing was really happening for a while the reveal of who was leaving her piano music was not really exciting and seemed kind of obvious. In terms of her friends, I felt that they were a bit rude at times when talking about the grief Natalie has had and is dealing with like they assumed that she would be over the death of her husband in the span of a couple of years. I will also say that this was not a book that I found super entertaining or interesting while reading but I think it did a good job of talking about grief. Although I did wish she had better friends and that it was not as slow. Thank you to Net Galley and Atria Books for providing this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I really love Louis’ writing! There is something about it that just really draws me in. This is my third book by her and I’m happy to say it didn’t disappoint! I think I will have a pretty good book hangover and be thinking about it for awhile.

I was quickly caught up in Natalie’s story. My heart broke for her at being such a young widow and not having friends who really understood her grief. I loved the introduction of Tom (who was swoon worthy even as a friend) and Joe. I loved how they both helped her start to come out of her grief in different ways. This was sad at times but also hopeful and left me smiling. I can’t wait for more books by Lia Louis!

✨I enjoyed this Lia Louis story SO much. Last year around this time I read Eight Perfect Hours and thought that that book was extremely sweet and enjoyable, but The Key to My Heart has to be my favorite of what I've read of Louis' so far. If you enjoyed one, you'll enjoy the other, but I think that TKTMH is more heartfelt and more thought out.

✨I don't want to spend this entire review just comparing two of Lia Louis' works, but I do have to say that the plot structure and a plot point or two remain almost identical (to me) in both stories. I prefer the way that those plots were executed in The Key to My Heart a lot more though, hence my higher rating. I also think that the characters are more likable in this story. Specifically, Tom. I loved that man and thought that he was great at being his own character while also existing as a friend and love interest for Natalie. I genuinely felt like his character was one that did not expect anything from Natalie, especially not while she was still confused and grieving her husband. He was a comedic relief, a listening ear, and a great character for what he was.

✨I don't read a lot of books that center around a musician where her work is so central to who they are as a character, but I think that Natalie's experience with playing the piano to cope and heal was done well. I enjoyed all of the song name drops and the mystery surrounding the piano pieces, but also her seeking a musical therapy/support group was something that really made my heart happy for her. Especially since she still is very much struggling with the death of her husband over two years later. I think it is clear that it all still felt very real for Natalie and I felt for her on many occasions. Natalie is a character that I wanted to root for, even when she entertained other people over my man Tom, and even though she was a flawed person. She has her issues with those in her life, like her friends, who want to be there for her but feel like Nat just pushes them further and further away.

✨Speaking of friends, there is one friend whom I do have beef with and I cannot go further with as to why at this time, thank you.

✨In the end, this story was so great and has really sparked my reading journey once again as we end this year. I have a post going up tomorrow that I felt really inspired to make because of this book, so I want to thank NetGalley and Atria Books for an eARC in exchange for my honest review.

If Lia Louis writes it, we will read it especially after falling in love with her book - Dear Emmie Blue. The Key to My Heart is no exception to her magic. She gave us all the feels - grief, heartache, hope & also love.

Natalie is trying to find her way back to music after her husband Russ’s tragic accident. When she starts finding sheet music to songs that mean something to her & Russ at the train station’s public piano she thinks it’s a sign from above.

She is grieving, sad and lonely. We could feel her sadness but when she started opening up to new friends, we could feel her growth. We loved the friends she makes along the way to finding peace like Just Tom, Shauna and Notebook Guy. Shauna was a bright spot in her new daily routine and their friendship was special. We loved that Shauna also became invested in the sheet music mystery!

The story was heavy on moving forward and growing into her new reality and a little less on the romance front but it was such a sentimental and lovely story that had us in tears at the end, especially after that romantic gesture!

Thank you to @atriabooks & @netgalley for the ARC in exchange for our honest review.

What we liked:
▪️Her sister Jodie and her whole family are great
▪️Loved Shauna
▪️Natalie and Tom’s banter
▪️ cinnamon roll Tom
▪️The sheet music mystery
▪️The love triangle didn’t have a villain (both men were great in their own way)

What we didn’t like:
▪️We wanted more romance!

Natalie Fincher was living a life she loved until her new husband died in an accident leaving her with a fixer-upper of his dreams. Two and a half years later, Natalie is still feeling lost and depressed. She spends her free time playing piano in the tube.

When she finds music in the piano bench meant for her, Natalie starts to feel a spark. Her inner musician comes aloe for the first time since her husband's death. Who is leaving her husband's favorite music?

This is the second book about music on this list of new release books but the main character in this Novel About Music had the most emotional journey.

Not quite the lighthearted romance I was anticipating, but more so an exploration of how a grieving widow learns to move on with her life sprinkled with a little romance. A bit of a slow moving novel that was enjoyable, but lacking that magic that I loved in Dear Emmie Blue.

The amount of tears that I shed could fill up a tub. Natalie poor Natalie. Grief is so hard and comes on all shapes and sizes and Natalie needed time to heal. No one could have helped her besides herself and a little of Tom and Joe

Natalie is mourning her husband who was killed two years ago. She's so lost she starts playing the piano in the subway. One day, someone has left her sheet music of her husband's favorite song. This is the story of how Natalie moves on.

As romance readers, we tend to love the big grand gesture. The grovel, the secret getaway, the loud, romantic declaration of love. And yet true romance is found in the minutiae of every day life. It's quieter. Lia Louis captures this like no other. Natalie is absolutely heartbroken. She's frozen in time after losing her husband way too young. Years after the loss, her friends can't bear to see her so sad still and all but force Natalie to go talk to a guy while they are out for girls night. Natalie agrees because she loves her friends and just wants to get away from their pity looks. A great friendship comes from that meeting with the super cute and easygoing Tom.

I loved the way that Tom and Natalie become friends. The tiny gestures. The quiet conversations. The way they make one another laugh. So much goodness in this book comes from the friendships within. Natalie's friends and family are there when she works to fix the house that she and her late husband bought to renovate. They encourage her when she meets the charming Joe and begins to consider dating. They listen when Natalie talks about the mystery that surrounds who has started leaving her sheet music at the piano in the train station. Natalie wonders if it could be her late husband sending her messages or someone else altogether.

Louis deals with grief and how we grow and change out of that darkness beautifully. I loved seeing Natalie, Joe, Tom, and Tom's mother, Shauna, all grow out of their loss. There is so much vulnerability and strength. Tossed in with lighter moments full of banter and laughter, The Key to My Heart is a perfect blend of all that makes up the joy of life. And there is still the big grand gesture that takes your heart away. Read this. You are sure to love it.

thank you to the publishers and netgalley for an arc of this book! it is on sale now!

this is a story about grief, and grieving love, and finding it again. grief is never an easy topic, but this book felt like it was sometimes lost in its sadness and that made it hard to find much light. i found myself hoping for some humor or warmth often while reading.

ultimately I had a hard time starting (and finishing) this one due to the pace. i always find that that is a hard review to give - is it me? Is it the book? i feel like if you are in the right frame of mind for a story like this, you will truly enjoy it.

however, the slow and reflective pace also made it feel real and emotional at times, and there were some poignant moments and some charm sprinkled throughout.

overall, a love story that spends much more time on grief and personal growth.

cws: death of a loved one (off page), grief, depression, hospitalization and caring for a loved one

I really enjoyed Eight Perfect Hours last year and was thrilled to receive an ARC for The Key to My Heart. This story demonstrates the long term relationship one can have with grief – there is no timeline or “right way” to grieve, as Natalie is learning two years following the loss of her husband, Russ. I was very invested in the mystery behind who was leaving the sheet music as the public piano at the train stop. There were some points when I was frustrated with her friends for trying to get her to move on from losing Russ (as someone who has experienced many types of loss over the years, you don’t just “move on” from any of them), but in the end they had Natalie’s best interest in mind to help her learn to live with her grief while also learning to be herself again. But I absolutely adored the side characters - Tom makes my heart melt, along with Shauna, Priya and even Joe.

Even though this came out in December, I wouldn’t necessarily qualify it as a “holiday read.” It also is more of a women’s fiction than a romance, even though there are certainly romantic relationships intertwined & an HEA at the end. It felt like a slower read, possibly because of the themes of grief, but ultimately I was invested to know how things turned out for Natalie and was cheering for her in the end.

Thank you to NetGalley & Atria for an advanced copy in exchange for a review. The Key to My Heart is available now.

Thank you #NetGalley for something that wasn’t just a book to me, it was an EXPERIENCE. I loved Lia Louis’ Dear Emmie Blue, giving it all the stars, and shockingly enough, I enjoyed The Key to My Heart (published today) even MORE! How can that even BE? This book gave me laughs and it gave me genuine tears. I hate crying. I do not like to cry in my free time, but there I was, and I would do it again. This book is touching!

I didn’t know much going into this book and I will keep it that way for you, too. I will just say that Natalie has suffered a loss, and someone is leaving her meaningful sheets of music at a public piano in a train station she plays at twice a week. It sounds so simple but this book was so amazingly COMPLICATED. Lia Louis did an incredible job piecing this beautiful puzzle together, and her writing was so lovely and true. She put words to so many feelings I have felt, and even if she describes a feeling I haven’t felt, she made me feel like I had. Like I said, it was an EXPERIENCE.

I try to copy quotes I love from each book I read, and I can love a book without copying down one quote. With this book, there were so many highlighted quotes. It is possibly more yellow than white!

I love Natalie, Tom, Joe, Shauna, and their conversations were so fun for me to eavesdrop on.

Absolute kudos for a novel so well-written, @lialouisauthor , it’s been added to my favorites list.

Closed door
5/5 stars

Thank you NetGalley and publisher for this ARC publication for an honest review.

The Key to My Heart
by Lia Louis
Pub Date: 06 Dec 2022

This book proves once again that Lia Louis is a brilliant writer! The story of the young widow, Natalie, was so powerful and real. You could feel her immense grief and how lost she was trying to figure out a life without the man she planned to spend forever with. The story was heartbreaking, but eventually you could see the fog lift as Hannah discovered who she was in this next chapter of life. While at first Hannah gets a spark to ignite with the mystery of the sheet music being left behind for her, she soon is finding more and more to invest in. I absolutely loved Tom and his mother! My only complaint in the book was the so called estranged best friend (I just don't get why she would confess what she did at the funeral!) and the forgiveness at the end seemed too easy. I think there needed to be more groveling...and a better understanding of WHY the friend did what she did. I just didn't buy the fact that she felt the need to confess?! UGH! Other than that, the book was quite lovely, bringing you on quite the emotional roller coaster ride.

5 Stars

Natalie's husband Russ died two and a half years ago. Her friends think it's time she moves on, but that doesn't happen on their schedule. And then she starts finding sheets of music in the bench at the public piano she plays. The songs are ones that were important in her relationship with Russ.

This was a beautiful book. It is focused on Natalie and her journey, rather than on a romance. There is a romantic element, but I won't even name who the character is. There's also a fun sense of mystery, as Natalie tries to determine who is leaving her the sheet music.

I also enjoyed watching her relationship with her friends and sister. Priya is such a great friend to Natalie. It really got me thinking not only about grief and healing, but also about how to be there for someone in need.

The pacing is slow, as befits the topic. It kept me engaged throughout. Though not my favorite from her, it's another lovely example of how well Lia Louis writes. Her prose is so thoughtful. At times, I paused just to admire a particular sentence or metaphor.

Thank you to Atria, Emily Bestler Books and @BookClubFavorites for the advanced reader copy. These opinions are my own.

Oh, my heart. I love Lia's way with words and ability to deep dive into her MCs. The Key to My Heart was such a good novel to follow up on Dear Emmie Blue and Eight Perfect Hours. (I have yet to read Somewhere Close to Happy but I keep staring at it staring at me from my TBR bookshelf.) Lia's stabs at humor bring some light to the sadness that permeates the intro.
Natalie continues to struggle with the grief of loss. Two years have passed since her husband passed and her best friend ruined their friendship. Anonymity of playing piano at the train station has been Natalie's only activity remotely close to her old life. Unexpectedly, music sheets begin to show up that are straight from memories of her husband and she has to wonder if he has anything to do with it.
I can't get over how lovely and heartwarming this reading experience was. If I wasn't a fan of Lia's before (which I was after Emmie), this would have clinched it. I won't ever not recommend her to others.
Thank you to Atria and Netgalley for the advanced copy. All thoughts in this review are my own.

This is my second book by this author, and the second time I wonder about classification. On NetGalley, this is labeled as Romance. And while there are plenty of romantic elements to this story, it’s not (in my opinion) the book’s central theme. To me, this is a story about love, loss, hope, despair, and a woman going through all of these emotions and trying to find her way out the other side. So yes, there is romance, past and present. There is even a HEA. I just don’t find that to be the overall theme of this story.

I found Natalie’s journey to be quite touching and even confusing. Not as in I was confused by the writing or the story, but I could feel Natalie’s confusion and frustration. Two steps forward and one step back in processing the death of her husband and how things played out in the days after his death. She lost some friends, pushed some friends away, and eventually made new friends in unlikely places. Most notably the coffee shop she started to frequent a few months after becoming a widow. Little by little, she got to know the workers and the other regulars and they became her “after” people. They hadn’t known her husband or her with her husband so they came into any relationship with her with a clean slate, and no preconceived ideas. She always felt as though she was on display or had to act a certain way with her other close friends, like they were expecting her to break down and wanted her to move on when she wasn’t ready. Her new friends were a place she could be; be herself, be sad, be angry.

While relationships were all over the place with Natalie’s friends, I loved the support she received from her sister and her sister’s family. They were so amazing with her and gave her space to grieve and multiple shoulders to cry on. Having sisters myself, I loved seeing the connections she had with hers.

As for the mysterious music Natalie started receiving, I found myself fully invested in figuring out who was leaving things for her. In my mind, everyone was a suspect. While I found this story to be a bit of a slow starter, I also was all in quite early on so it didn’t matter how slow it was moving, I kept turning the pages.

There isn’t a lot I can say about the (new) romance element in Natalie’s life without including spoilers, so I’m not going to get into that part of the story. Just know that the reawakening of Natalie’s heart to finding love again is a multi-step process and it takes some stumbling around for her to find her path. I appreciate the author giving great care to this part of the story and not negating the deep love Natalie had with her husband.

This story is quite beautiful, but it had some annoying timeline inconsistencies for me. As usual, this sort of thing may be something others won’t even notice. I’m a stickler for continuity and there was more than one issue so that took some of my enjoyment away. But overall, I enjoyed the book and will surely be recommending it to others.

This is the second novel I have read by Lia Louis, and AGAIN it is another 5-star read.

The Key to my Heart is a heartfelt story of one women's grief over losing her husband just as they were making their home. Since his death, Natalie has gone through the motions of living, feeling nothing. She finds therapy in playing the piano in the subway terminal she visits a couple days a week. To her surprise, sheet music appears on the stool with songs that evoke memories of her late husband. Is this a gift from her husband to help her find her happiness to move forward in life and love?

Slowly, Natalie begins to unravel the mystery of the music. Plus she finds a friend at the local coffee shop with its owner who introduces her to her son. a local photographer. Tom is also a handyman and convinces Natalie to let him help her with the many cottage repairs needed to keep her home standing. Together, they develop a friendship built on authentic conversations and a honest approach to healing. Tom's funny, sweet, handsome and everything Natalie needs to mend her broken heart.

The ending is love and hope perfection. The Key to my Heart is contemporary fiction with a romantic subplot.

Thank you Atria Books, Atria/Emily Bestler Books for the complimentary copy of this novel. Thank you Atria Books for the complimentary copy of this novel.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Atria books for my copy of The Key to My Heart A Novel by Lia Louis in exchange for an honest review. It publishes today, December 6, 2022.
This was a really sweet, unique book. I really enjoyed it, however, it was marketed as a Christmas book, and aside from one mention of Last Christmas playing, I don't recall any Christmas content. That being said, I think that elevates this to an any time of the year romance, rather than a Christmas romance.
It was real, sweet, heartbreaking, and touching. Definitely worth the read if you love sweet romances with great character development, and no sex scenes!

How do you reimagine your life when you’re deep in grief and betrayal, when you loose the love of your life and your best friend? This is what Lia Louis asks in her new book The Key To My Heart. Make no mistake, set your expectations, this is not a fuzzy feel-good holiday rom-com. It is a beautiful book that follows Natalie three years after the death of her husband trying to find a way forward that reflects her.
Natalie, a gifted pianist, has been playing a public piano near a train station. Inexplicably sheet music starts showing up for songs that correspond to meaningful events to Natalie. A small spark is ignited as she is determined to find out who is leaving the music.
I loved the duality, the complexity of feelings Lia Louis introduces here. Natalie’s friends and family have specific ideas of how (and how long) she should be grieving. The pressure of performative healing, of moving on, simply to appease those closest to her is exhausting. I appreciated the feelings of guilt as Natalie considers what her future looks like when this conflicts with previous plans. I couldn’t wait to see how the love triangle played out and the future Natalie built for herself.
I loved this and can’t wait to read other books by Lia Louis! I think it’s perfect for fans of Lia Louis’ previous books, Eight Perfect Hours and Dear Emmie Blue. Thank you to Atria, Emily Bestler Books, Lia Louis and Netgalley for the advance reader copy.

As soon as I saw that Lia Louis was releasing a new book, it immediately went on my to-be-read list. Did I need to read the synopsis? No. Did I have to see the cover? No. Ever since I read Dear Emmie Blue, I have been a big fan of this author’s writing, and she has never steered me wrong. She has quickly become one of my go-to authors. If she writes it, you can be sure that I’m going to read it.

The Key to My Heart was everything that I had hoped it would be. With a wonderful cast of characters, a heartfelt story, and fabulous banter, this book had it all. I knew that this book was going to be special as soon as I began reading it.

Two and a half years after her husband’s death, Natalie is still going through the motions of living life. I was immediately invested in Natalie’s life. I felt for her, I wanted her to find peace and happiness again. I always try to put myself in the character’s shoes, and in all honesty, I could completely understand why she would feel stagnant and lost. With that being said, I still wanted to see her living and thriving again, and I was more than eager to embark on that journey with her.

When someone starts leaving sheet music in the train station’s piano bench, Natalie is intrigued. These aren’t just any songs; these are songs that meant something to her and her late husband. This gives her a spark, something to focus on, a bright spot to her days.

Throughout Natalie’s search for the anonymous source of the music, she had encountered a few people who just seemed to “get” her, who understood her grief and pain, or who just knew how to bring a smile to her face with a few kind words or some humorous banter. Oh, yes! I particularly enjoyed the chemistry and back and forth with a particular friend.

As a fan of slow-burning romances, this one was done to perfection. Absolute perfection! The author took her time to develop the story and the relationship, never allowing it to feel forced or rushed. Everything transpired in a smooth and authentic way.

The Key to My Heart was emotional, romantic, and hopeful. I felt torn between wanting to read it all in one sitting and savoring every word in order to make it last. Upon finishing it, I was not only over-the-moon in love with this book but also sad that I had to say goodbye to these characters. This book will definitely be making my list of favorite books of 2022!

*5 Stars