Crush

A Novel

By: Ada Calhoun

Narrated by: Robyn Maryke

A TIME Best Book of 2025

“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.

This Spoke to my soul

It’s as if she was describing my life and all the questions I asked myself.
While my journey and situation was different of course, the similarities, conflict and challenges I faced, helped me to have so many awe stricken moments of how so many things resonated with my soul and heart.
I will be listening to this again and again.

Thank you Ada.

Boring and trite

The story is so played out. Middle aged woman tired of taking care of everyone else and decides to be happy and live for herself. There is nothing mind blowing or even surprising.

Quite possibly life changing

If you feel even slightly unfulfilled in your marriage and life, proceed with caution. I loved it, but I need to sit with it for a while. Excellent.

insufferable main characters

I love domestic dramas that raise important questions about love and marriage. This book struck some good notes along those lines, but the three central characters were miserable people. The husband was written as lazy and one-dimensional. The wife and her emotional affair partner were horribly pretentious and not half as clever as they thought they were. I kept listening because I was hoping that something very bad would happen to at least one of them. I was disappointed.

A Guidebook for How to Rationalize Infidelity

I picked this book up as part of the Goodreads August challenge and thought it would be a thoughtful exploration of love and personal growth. Instead the story reads more like a guidebook for how to rationalize infidelity with your spouse's blessing.

The book centers on a wife who essentially seeks and receives her husband's permission to cheat, under the guise of “emotional honesty” and “freedom.” What’s framed as liberating and modern felt to me like a deeply self-indulgent and unsettling descent into boundary-pushing for its own sake. There’s little reflection on the emotional cost or damage this kind of arrangement can cause. As someone who’s been cheated on in my own marriage, reading Crush felt like watching someone justify emotional betrayal with a thesaurus and a permission slip.

Why suffer through boring old monogamy when you can intellectualize infidelity and call it empowerment? This isn’t a love story - It’s a permission slip for boundary-blurring and calling it brave. Spoiler: It’s not brave. It’s just messy. And not in the fun, relatable way more like the “please stop romanticizing emotional landmines” kind of way.