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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