Set in the punk-rock scene of the early 2000s and vibrating with the intense ache of bad choices and deep longing, A Cigarette Lit Backward is a needle-sharp portrait of a young woman and how far she’ll go to find acceptance.

Kat is dying to be accepted by the North Carolina punks; she is totally desperate to seem cool. At a punk show, she ends up backstage with a rock star and gets noticed by a photojournalist. And then—a dream come true for Kat—her reputation as a groupie icon skyrockets. But to maintain this notoriety, Kat makes a series of devastating choices, and soon enough, she becomes unrecognizable to herself and others.

A Cigarette Lit Backwards is a sometimes funny, often brutally honest novel about ambition and self-discovery and how a world of glamour and cool exerts its bold and breathless pull. In prose that seduces, glitters, and exhilarates, Tea Hacic-Vlahovic has written a novel that is both a wild party and a somber reckoning, consolidating her status as a thrilling and essential new voice for our time.

“A perfect coming-of-age story—with a perfect soundtrack—that walks the fragile in-between of finding out who you are and trying not to let other people decide for you. Welcome to the party room.” —Brendan Jay Sullivan, author of Rivington was Ours: Lady Gaga, the Lower East Side, and the Prime of Our Lives