Crush - by Ada Calhoun (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Named a Best Book of 2025 by TIME, Elle, and Marie Claire

"Ada Calhoun writes with absolute clarity about the giddiest and most destabilizing feeling--the crush. This novel made me feel dizzy and I loved every second. Calhoun can seduce me any day of the week."
--Emma Straub, New York Times bestselling author of This Time Tomorrow

When a husband asks his wife to consider what might be missing from their marriage, what follows surprises them both--sex, heartbreak and heart rekindling, and a rediscovered sense of all that is possible

She's happy and settled and productive and content in her full life--a child, a career, an admirable marriage, deep friendships, happy parents, and a spouse she still loves. But when her husband urges her to address what the narrow labels of "husband" and "wife" force them to edit out of their lives, the very best kind of hell breaks loose.

Using the author's personal experiences as a jumping-off point, Crush is about the danger and liberation of chasing desire, the havoc it can wreak, and most of all the clear sense of self one finds when the storm passes. Destined to become a classic novel of marriage, and tackling the big questions being asked about partnership in postpandemic relationships, Crush is a sharp, funny, seductive, and revelatory novel about holding on to everything it's possible to love--friends, children, parents, passion, lovers, husbands, all of the world's good books, and most of all one's own deep sense of purpose.

Review Quotes

"Feels like a brainy rom-com that could have been adapted by the late great Nora Ephron . . . The true romance at the heart of the book is a recovery of self . . . Crush reveals the sly ways we delude ourselves into accepting what's good enough and the liberating ways we can recover our joie de vivre as well as our autonomy."
--The Boston Globe

"Ensnaring . . . A breezy humor brushes most every page . . . Calhoun makes the specific universal by pointing it all back toward the puzzle most of us spend our whole lives working out: love in its many forms."
--Associated Press

"A taut, hilarious novel about the pitfalls of polyamory. Against a backdrop of Manhattan intellectuals and artists, Calhoun dives deep into the dos and don'ts of devotion."
--Hamilton Cain, TIME

"A wry critique of the sexual confines of marriage... [In Crush, ] Calhoun's cleverest feat is blowing us along in this whirlwind of desire and possibility. As ever, Calhoun suggests, women must carve some new path through a thicket of emotional briars. That may sound grim, but rest assured this is not another tale about women's sexuality that's so depressing."
--The Washington Post

"It's an unusual love story... Very seductive, an interesting take on marriage and love.
--Kwame Alexander, naming Crush the best romance of the month on the TODAY Show

"Calhoun has a gift for explaining complicated emotions with concise, carefully chosen prose. If you're a woman of a certain age whose hot flashes have reignited other fires within, you will read and feel recognized."
--Vulture

"For decades, male anxiety, depression and sexual dissatisfaction passed as capacious themes for fiction (see: 20th-century novels by White guys named John). That such audacious writers as [Ada Calhoun] are turning those themes on the lathes of their own sharp fiction isn't just fair play, it's cause for celebration."
--Ron Charles

"Ada's new book, Crush, is a novel, and in many ways it circles similar themes, but this one feels like a rollicking rom-com."
-- Anna Sale, "Death, Sex & Money" Slate Podcast

"Ultimately, Crush explores when to realize a partnership has reached an impasse, and when to take yourself on a new adventure."
--Jezebel

"Her giddy new romance sets the stage for an exploration of marital constructs and what it means to seek desire at any age."
--Bustle

"Calhoun (Also a Poet, St. Marks is Dead) makes the leap to fiction with a fizzy and powerful exploration of modern marriage--and the pitfalls and excitements of redefining marriage while you're inside of it. It's a story about love, in so many of its forms, and the chaos that can come from a crush. It's both more than a romance novel and absolutely a romance novel. It's a delight."
--Lit Hub

"Calhoun masterfully captures the intoxicating, sometimes perilous thrill of desire--and the complexities that come with it."
--TheSkimm

"Crush is a charming diversion... a contemporary updating of a 19th-century epistolary romance novel. Imagine if Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning wrote incessant emails to one another."
--New Zealand Herald "Book of the Day"

"Highbrow & Brilliant"
--New York Magazine Approval Matrix

"Deep and thought-provoking, with hot sex scenes"
--Emily Gould, The Cut

"Crush is a gripping read about finding new love in midlife."
--Naomi Watts

"Ada Calhoun's Crush is sexy and silly and hopeful."
--Lena Dunham, Good Thing Going

"Ada Calhoun writes with absolute clarity about the giddiest and most destabilizing feeling--the crush. This novel made me feel dizzy and I loved every second. Calhoun can seduce me any day of the week."
--Emma Straub, New York Times bestselling author of This Time Tomorrow

"Crush marks Ada Calhoun's arrival as a novelist, and what an incredibly explosive arrival it is. This book is a sumptuous exploration of how desire takes us over without a shred of moral hedging. A vertiginous--yet somehow also clarifying--novel that will grab you by your shoulders and shake you until you feel alive."
--Isaac Fitzgerald, New York Times-bestselling author of Dirtbag, Massachusetts

"Warm and smart and gripping."
--Curtis Sittenfeld, New York Times bestselling author of Romantic Comedy

"I didn't just read Crush; I inhaled it like it would save my life. I loved this book. And I loved its honest depiction of what love can do to and for us."
--Bethany Ball, author of The Pessimists

"Visceral, intelligent, funny, emotional, and layered. A revolutionary romance for the 'good girls' among us."
--Shauna Niequist, author of the New York Times bestseller I Guess I Haven't Learned That Yet

"In Crush, desire is an irresistible force. Ada Calhoun is a master at capturing the way we live now, and her propulsive, witty, dreamy debut novel made me feel like I was exchanging secrets with my smartest friend. A heady delight."
--Claire Dederer, nationally bestselling author of Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma

"The word 'crush' often conjures the innocence of adolescence--a time when your life story isn't yet written and anything is possible. But what happens when that dormant feeling is awakened in middle age? Ada Calhoun's Crush is a gripping fever dream of a book leading the reader into the beguiling depths of desire, ecstasy, and obsession."
--Molly Ringwald

"The love child of Elizabeth Gilbert's "Eat Pray Love" and Carrie Bradshaw's "Sex and the City" column, Ada Calhoun's debut novel, "Crush," tells the promising story of an unnamed Gen X woman whose husband, Paul, suggests she kiss a few other men to regain her 'sparkle.'"
--The New York Times Book Review

"Calhoun captures the giddy high of desire. This romp through a middle-aged crush is as smart and sharp as you'd expect from the author of Also a Poet. Calhoun's quick-paced story invites readers to lose themselves to the possibility of love taking unexpected shapes, while also providing a jumping-off point for exploring art and culture. Regardless of how readers engage with the story, they will find in Crush an opportunity to view the world through a new lens."
--BookPage (starred review)

"Crush (such a charged word) interrogates all that we think we know about love and soul mates, commitment and conviction, while tracking the long struggle to fully become oneself and do right . . . [An] angsty, metaphysical, literature-besotted love story."
--Booklist (starred review)

"Chock-full of great lines . . . Anything Ada Calhoun wants to write is well worth reading."
--Kirkus Review

About the Author

Ada Calhoun is the author of Also a Poet, named one of the best books of 2022 by The New York Times, NPR, and The Washington Post, longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, and featured on the Today show and PBS NewsHour. Her other books include St. Marks Is Dead and the New York Times bestseller Why We Can't Sleep.