BOOK REVIEW: Fade Into You

 

FADE INTO YOU
by Amber Smith & Sam Gellar
Available now

The year is 1999, and teenagers Bird and Jessa are having multiple unique issues of their own when it comes to family and love. But these two strangers have one thing in common: their best friends are dating. As Bird watches Kayla start to act like an entirely different person, Jessa watches Dade become less and less interested in their usual music and movie get-togethers. After a rocky start, Bird and Jessa become uneasy allies in a shared venture: break up the new couple.

As they work together to sabotage the romance, however, they begin to get closer themselves. Jessa is a lesbian who happens to have been outed unceremoniously by Bird's stepsister, and Bird had summer romances with both a boy and a girl. Over time, they begin to catch feelings for each other. But between their uneasy ongoing friendships with Dade and Kayla, their troubles at home, and Jessa's fear of Bird suffering the same bullying she has at school, it isn't smooth sailing. As New Year's Eve (and Y2K) approaches, both will have to come to terms with how they navigate love and friendships.

Reading Fade Into You was an interesting exercise, since I was the same age as the protagonists in the year the novel takes place. From a nostalgia standpoint, it was a bit odd. The slang was anachronistic, with the majority of the attempts to place the story in time being dedicated to what movies were playing and what bands were popular with different demographics. A lot of the attempts at integrating this into dialogue felt odd (one character telling another she "let [her] fingers do the walking" when asked how she found a phone number). At the same time, there didn't seem to be any attempts to have the characters speak like 90s characters. If anything, the dialogue felt oddly modern. All of this feels strange considering at least one of the two authors is, according to a bit of quick research, of the same sort of age as Bird and Jessa.

And here is where I'm divided on Fade Into You. Placing Bird and Jessa's story right on the edge of Y2K — a time when everyone feared the collapse of the world, but the world moved on, thanks to quiet hard work under the surface — is extremely pleasing on a symbolic level. Too, taking young readers outside the discourse-driven world of 2025 to a time when discussions on mental health and sexuality were a mess is a good and important thing to do. In that respect, the book gets things absolutely right. One of the book's subplots, following Jessa's sister Mack and her struggle with BPD, mirrors the stigma I personally recall surrounding not so much having a mental illness as being seen to have a mental illness.

The short version is, Fall Into You is an excellent story (more specifically, two good character pieces) couched in a world that is the 90s socially while feeling like a 90s replica culturally and aesthetically. For the book's demographic, this might be the way to go. For all I know, a teenager would not be able to take a book seriously if the characters talked the way we actually did back then. If you're looking for a throwback to the era you lived in, this isn't the book for you. But if you're looking for a turbulent love story that also happens to have strong message about how to care for others while looking after yourself, it's a strong yes.

TEA PAIRING: Sugar and Spice Chai Tea Bundle
Normally I pair books with one tea, but Chapters' new chai bundle fits the central couple of Fade Into You perfectly. A combo of sweet, bookish Vanilla Chai (for Bird) and strong, bold Spice Chai Mélange (for Jessa), this bundle also comes with a basket steeper and quill spoon. Use my code KARA15 for 15% off this and other orders from Chapters!