“Why am I telling you this?” he often asked after a story about his day. “Because I want to tell you everything.” 

-       “Crush’, by Ada Calhoun 

 

As a life long romance reader, I am fascinated when authors experiment with the form. 

And that is the most interesting reading  of what this book is: a romance novel. It features a married female protagonist, who, in the process of opening her marriage, exposes cracks in her relationship with her husband. I think it pushes the boundaries of how a romance novel can be written in a way that the genre really needs. It pulls from literary fiction, memoir, ‘cultural history’, and more to create a book that, I think, is fairly unique. 

Personally,  I think the romance genre could use some innovation and I think books like this are a step in the right direction. 

I have a few criticisms with the writing. I found some of the refences to be gratuitous. I’m specifically talking about every time the author described something as ‘like this movie’, ‘like this song’, etc. (The narrator and her new love fall for each other via their love of literature and books. Those are not the references I’m referring to.) I read an ARC of this book. Perhaps some of these were cut in the final edits. 

That is mostly a nit-pick though. My main critique, and where I feel the book fails to live up to its premise, is in its depiction of our narrator’s husband and her new lover. Both characterizations read very flat to me. The husband was reduced to only the base characteristics that made him a difficult partner and the new lover (apart from the last few chapters) was exalted as her perfect ideal. This book is fiction, however, it was heavily inspired by the author’s real life and our narrator is unnamed and speaks in the first person. I don’t know where real life ends and fiction begins, but it seems strange that both these characters read so flatly when at least on is based on a real person. Perhaps, there were emotional places she didn’t want to go in the writing with these characters… 

(Plus, I have a specific aversion to any usage of the term ‘asexual’ in a negative context. This comes up later when our narrator starts to see experience some of her new lovers less than ideal qualities.) 

Overall, it was a worthwhile read to me and I’d recommend it to anyone interested in exploring the edges of romance. 

IMPORTANT POLYAMORY NOTE:  

This book features two people failing terribly at consensual non-monogamy, and is, ultimately, anti-polyamory in its message. The polyamory is what attracted me to this book, so that really sucks. 

 [This review is based an advanced reader copy, provided by NetGalley. Thank you, NetGalley!]