True Love

Crewe is an author of huge imaginative range.

Literary Review

Paddy Crewe has a 24-carat gift.

Sebastian Barry

A gorgeous, compulsive, lionhearted book which I was caught up by and rolled along with over the course of a single breathless weekend. Beautiful and clever.

Nick Blackburn, author of The Reactor

Empathetic, honest, compelling. I’ll read anything Paddy Crewe writes.

Bonnie Garmus, author of Lessons in Chemistry

Paddy Crewe’s True Love is a piercing look at the fissure love opens in us, revealing both our deepest joys and our deepest pains.

Ingrid Persaud, author of Love After Love

True Love is a wonderful novel. Brilliant storytelling and exhilarating prose from Paddy Crewe had me entranced and rooting for Keely and Finn from the start. The depictions of loneliness, voicelessness and grappling with language to find connection are spot on. There are themes of painful abandonment, grief, refuge in reading and, of course, redemption through true love. A deeply moving love story that combines elements of fairy tale and gritty realism to offer a compelling exploration of young love.

Priscilla Morris, author of Black Butterflies

True Love had me from its gorgeous, lyrical opening to its transcendent final pages. Paddy Crewe is an exceptionally gifted writer.

Louise Kennedy, author of Trespasses

No doubt about it, Paddy Crewe is the real thing. Such skilful handling of love’s warring tides and such emotional depth. And prose of real visceral presence bringing to light that most delicate instrument, the human heart.

Mike McCormack, author of Solar Bones

Paddy Crewe writes with a lyrical, lonely prose that’s full of the kind of tenderness which both frightens and saves us

Minnie Driver

Paddy Crewe brings out the longing, the fire, and the strange melancholy of love in the tale of Keely and Finn where love is ripped away, rebuilt, and found again. A love story in the truest sense told with stinging insight and moments of quiet beauty.

Scott Preston, author of The Borrowed Hills

A raw and beautiful novel. Paddy Crewe writes about people and places seldom seen in literary fiction, and creates an astonishing portrait of love on the margins. Lives like these are rarely handled with such tenderness and precision.

Tom Newlands, author of Only Here, Only Now

Such a gorgeous, tender novel, filled with profound wisdom about the chaos that lies within us and between us. Beautiful and life-affirming, it just grabbed my heart. The ending is just perfect.

Donal Ryan, author of The Queen of Dirt Island

Pulls you in, holds you fast. A mesmerising tale of love and the depth of loneliness.

Claire Daverley, author of Talking at Night

Brilliant – a wonderful, powerful, urgent writer.

David Almond, author of Skellig

This slow-burn love story is gorgeously written, with two characters you won’t forget easily

Good Housekeeping

Invokes this sense of melancholy with true deftness . . . Crewe’s unabashed desire to move his readers is to be genuinely commended . . . A full-throated, heart-on-sleeve piece of storytelling

Guardian

Paddy Crewe's excellent second book will be one of the best things that you read all year

Observer

Remarkable . . . Crewe’s sensitivity to the tentacles of neglect in his characters is phenomenal. Time and again he captures a deep human truth.

Sunday Times

True Love is a perfect read if you’re looking for a character-driven novel with split narratives or a coming-of-age story that is both heartbreaking and uplifting, reminiscent of Sally Rooney’s work

Press Association

An immersion in the need for love beyond all else

Sainsbury's Magazine

Crewe recounts in lavish, unhurried prose [the protagonists'] respective childhoods, their abrupt coming together, their gradual drifting apart, and the love that keeps the two connected throughout like a magnetic thread . . . There's an earnestness to the writing, yet it’s a heart scorcher just the same. Read it and indulge

Daily Mail

Effective and moving . . . Crewe’s prose sings

Financial Times

Crewe's story is . . . one of low, heavy emotions. But it is sustained throughout by the gruff lyricism of his writing . . . And while the novel moves at a steady pace, it builds to a climactic final third

New Statesman