If you loved
Books like Crush
A breathless, blood-soaked fever dream of obsessive love and the violence of wanting someone too much. These 12 books are the closest matches in mood, pace and themes, with what each one shares with Crush.
- feverish
- cinematic
- claustrophobic
- erotic
- 01
Night sky with exit wounds
Ocean Vuong
A devastating and luminous exploration of how history's violence echoes through the body, family, and queer desire.
- 02
Poems 1962-2012
Louise Glück
A stark, deceptively simple journey through myth, nature, and the paradox of a mortal body producing enduring art.
- 03
Closer
Dennis Cooper
A dark, unflinching exploration of obsessive desire and the destructive search for meaning in the hollows of middle America.
- 04
The Tradition
Jericho Brown
A daring, formally inventive exploration of trauma, identity, and survival that cuts to the core of the human experience.
- 05
The wild iris
Louise Gluck · 1992
A haunting, polyphonic conversation between a gardener, the earth, and the divine, blooming with quiet devastation.
- 06
If They Come for Us
Fatimah Asghar
A soulful, raw exploration of identity, orphanhood, and inherited violence told through experimental and lyrical verse.
- 07
The Sluts
Dennis Cooper
A dizzying, voyeuristic descent into an internet forum where desire, myth, and extreme violence blur into a terrifying hall of mirrors.
- 08
Love, An Index
Rebecca Lindenberg
A fierce, soulful exploration of love and sudden loss told through musically elaborate and deeply personal verse.
- 09
I Hope We Choose Love
Kai Cheng Thom
A tender, urgent plea for radical compassion and transformative justice in the face of community heartbreak.
- 10
Howl, and Other Poems
Allen Ginsberg · 1956
A breathless, jazz-fueled scream against conformity that finds the sacred in the gutter.
- 11
Almost like being in love
Steve Kluger
A witty, mixed-media romp through the bittersweet nostalgia of first love and the hilarious, heart-pounding leap of trying to win it back.
- 12
The Rose That Grew From Concrete
Tupac Shakur
A raw, intimate glimpse into the tender and defiant heart of a generational icon.
