Crush - Ada Calhoun

One of the most anticipated* books of 2025!

She’s happy and productive in her full life—with a child, a career, an admirable marriage, and deep friendships, she’s the very model of a good wife, mother, and daughter. But when her husband invites 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.

Ada Calhoun’s debut novel mines the literary canon and the heart of middle age and turns up fresh wisdom about the danger and liberation of chasing desire, illuminating new ways to embrace freedom, ambition, and partnership. Those staggered by Calhoun’s “brave, blistering . . . fierce, dissonant, yet compelling”** nonfiction—her critically acclaimed memoir Also A Poet and her New York Times bestseller Why We Can’t Sleep: Women’s New Midlife Crisis—will be delighted to find that Crush takes everything Calhoun absorbed about the lives of women and their relationships through her research and—using the bones of her own postpandemic reckoning as a jumping-off point— delivers, in fiction this time, another book that “makes you feel less crazy.”***

Sharp and revelatory, Crush implores us to savor and hold 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.

* AARP, Zibby, Seattle Times, etc.

** The Washington Post on Also a Poet

*** Kelly Ripa on Why We Can’t Sleep

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Download Book Club Questions for CRUSH here!

Q&A with Ada Calhoun

[STARRED] "Suspense is the primary draw for this angsty, metaphysical, literature-besotted love story... 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."
— Donna Seaman, Booklist

“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 reading into the beguiling depths of desire, ecstasy, and obsession.”
— Molly Ringwald

Praise for Crush

"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

"Calhoun’s debut novel, following the wonderful memoir Also a Poet (2022), is chock-full of great lines, both hers and quotations from other writers...Anything Ada Calhoun wants to write is well worth reading."

—Kirkus Reviews

"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, national bestselling author of Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma

“Visceral, intelligent, funny, emotional, and layered. A revolutionary romance for ‘good girls’ among us.”

—Shauna Niequist, author of the New York Times bestseller I Guess I Haven’t Learned That Yet

“I didn’t just read Crush; I inhaled it like it would save my life. Calhoun captures the chaotic experience of a marriage’s dissolution and a new midlife romance with the insight and humor she brings to all her work. 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