Calling a novel True Love is a bold move. It is a title so earnestly declarative that I had initially assumed it must be ironic. But True Love is an entirely straight-faced, sentimental, open-hearted love story. This quietly peculiar fact is the book’s central strength and, ultimately, its primary weakness.
The second novel by Paddy Crewe, author of the widely acclaimed historical romp My Name Is Yip, True Love tells the stories of Finn and Keely, both troubled, both lonely, and both yearning for the type of safe haven they eventually come to find in one another. Keely, the more compelling of the two, emerges from a childhood marked by tragedy and post-industrial malaise into an early adulthood characterised by a drive for oblivion, her restless soul a mirror of the ragged coastal landscape that haunts her dreams. Finn, on the other hand, is a still point in Keely’s turning world, insular and awkward, opening up hesitantly, solid ice slowly thawing under the heat of her affection.
