The Fade

The Fade by Demitria Lunetta made me feel old. Being an adult who reads YA titles, this occasionally happens. Still none have yet hit me quite this hard, and it was all thanks to this one passage, where the heroine teases her sister:

            “Whatever, Sporty Spice.”

            She looks at me. “Who?”

            “You know, the Spice Girls. They were a girl group in the nineties…”

            I don’t bother to explain that I helped Mom rip all her old CDs to her computer…

This book was published in 2018, so it makes sense that the teenage characters wouldn’t be terribly familiar with the Spice Girls, but I was still surprised. I turned 30 recently, and the fact that I am now closer in age to the parents than the teenagers in some of the books that I read still hasn’t completely sunk in.

Other than this shock to my system, I really enjoyed The Fade. The story revolves around Hayley, who moves from Chicago with her parents and older sister to an old house in small town Wisconsin. Shortly after moving in, she begins to hear stories of the Grabbed Girls of Gladwell, four girls who disappeared about five years before. The girls were all from her neighborhood, and one of them had lived in her house. Hayley knows that the girls were actually killed, because she begins to sense the girls’ ghosts. The novel revolves around her hunt for their killer.

The Fade gets instant points for inclusivity. The main character is half Vietnamese, and there are several gay and lesbian side characters. For the most part the characters behave like realistic teenagers and are pretty likable, even if the fast pace of the story means that some character development falls to the wayside.

There’s also a few neat twists that seasoned horror fans may see coming, but the average YA reader might not. About halfway through the book, one twist takes the novel in a new and interesting direction. It’s unique enough that it allows The Fade to stand apart from many similarly plotted novels.

Ultimately, I highly recommend The Fade for older teens and adults who enjoy YA. The subject matter (which includes suicide, abuse, and murder) plus the somber tone of the latter half of the book might be too heavy for younger readers, but older ones should appreciate this novel’s unique take on the haunted house genre.