Paperback Edition
ISBN: 9781936932412
Publication Date: 11-13-2018

A portrait of a young girl in the glorious wasteland of 1990s Los Angeles, Fade Into You recalls the hormonal haze and urgency of adolescence.

High school junior Nikki Darling alternates between cutting class and getting high, flirting with drugs, crushes, and counterculture to figure out how she fits into the world. Running increasingly wild with other angst-ridden outcasts, she pushes herself to the edge only to find herself trapped in the cyclical violence of growing up female.

Written in dreamy, subterranean prose, this novel captures the reckless defiance and fragility of girlhood. 

“The voice, the best thing in the novel…comes at the reader in an appealing tumble-rush and hypnotic fashion.” —Booklist

"Part punk zine, part battle cry, this debut wields teen angst and riot grrrl rage like a spiked dog collar or a fist."—Kirkus Reviews

“An electric novel.”—Publishers Weekly

“This book serves as a reminder that teen girls are strong, brave, complex, and vitally important.”—The Rumpus

“A deeply personal mythology interwoven with the fibers of LA, simultaneously shaped by and shaping our city, Nikki Darling’s Fade Into You is a poetic portrait of a young girl’s life in the Angeleno multiverse.” —Alice Bag, author of Violence Girl

“Nikki Darling hypnotizes with poetry and slang, the edgy mystery of teen friendships, unavailable parents, the uselessness of education, and crucial importance of gossip. She shows us the real world through the eyes of a girl on the cusp of sinking or swimming. Beautiful.” —Michelle Tea, author of Against Memoir

“Nikki Darling captures the layers of being and not being in one of the great world cities, Los Angeles, but moreover of the San Gabriel Valley. Darling understands the sterile streets tinged with deadly angst, the disarming city that hits you between the eyes, the way voices and beats stream out of yawning windows and rolled-down car windows. She sings and shouts from an LA no Hollywood can touch.” —Luis J. Rodriguez, author of Always Running

“A glorious illumination of the dark corners of teen trouble, Fade Into You tangles Chicano cultural inheritance, nascent punk self-discovery, and kid truth in a stoned haze. Darling’s vivid prose is transporting.” —Jessica Hopper, author of The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic

“Nikki Darling and I are in love with the same girl, California, and Nikki has written a love letter to her in the form of a hella vernacular novel of which I’m envious AF. Reading Fade Into You is like tasting an orange grown in this magical place: you can savor the SoCal sun on every page, and this sun tastes tangier, dirtier, and more glamorous than it does anywhere else on this weird, stupid earth. Taste it and get that Vitamin C.” —Myriam Gurba, author of Mean

“Feeling something like a gloriously stitched-together punk zine, with poetry pasted on its jagged collage edges.” —Brit + Co

Interested in reading this book with a group? Download group discussion questions for Fade Into You here!