I Love You So Much It's Killing Us Both

Zibby Mag, A Most Anticipated Title of the Year

"A ferocious debut that vibrates with music, insight and the electric torment of youth. I Love You So Much It’s Killing Us Both is a story of shared—and shed—trauma that lays bare the power of friendship to make, or break, a life."—Cecilia Rabess, author Everything's Fine

"Mariah Stovall's prose sounds like driving in a car with your best friend, volume up high on your favorite song. I Love You So Much... resurrected feelings I had almost forgotten about what it means to be young in a hard, and nonetheless beautiful, world." —Vauhini Vara, author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Immortal King Rao

“I Love You So Much It's Killing Us Both is a funny, biting, and big-hearted coming of age story. Enter these pages for Mariah Stovall's witty renderings of the contradictions of millennial youth and for her lovingly excavated cultural artifacts; stay for her poignant reflections on what it means to grow into an adult, to be a friend, and to belong to our moment in history.” —Sanjena Sathian, author of Gold Diggers

“Somehow, the best literature—the literature I live for—has always been punk, and Mariah Stovall’s novel is a beautiful case in point. I Love You So Much It’s Killing Us Both really shook me.” —John Wray, author of Gone to the Wolves

"You know Khaki Oliver: the dorm-mate with the punk-poster-plastered wall, the quiet kid muttering withering put-downs across the aisle, the solo Black girl at the show with her defenses understandably up, your best friend if you could just say the right thing. I Love You So Much… is a glow-in-the-dark switchblade: illuminating, cutting, and unsettlingly comical. In this tale of the obsessions that consume suburban misfits, Mariah Stovall has layered in sneaky-funny one-liners, Easter eggs for punks, and irrefutable truths about the queasy isolation of being the Black friend, the Black girl at the gig, and merely middle-class around rich people." —Chris L. Terry, author of Black Card and Zero Fade, coeditor of Black Punk Now

“Mariah Stovall’s heady debut plays an addictive game of connect-the-dots between two estranged friends through a galaxy of shared pop-culture references and personal history. I Love You So Much It's Killing Us Both is a spiraling meditation on the porousness of music and memory, the blurred lines between obsession and friendship, and the hearts we must break in order to grow—including our own.” — Emma Brodie, author of Songs In Ursa Major

“You don't need a prior relationship to the sounds and saints of punk, emo, and hardcore to get swept into the currents of Stovall's pulsing storytelling. Her debut artfully dilates the cruel intimacy of one teenage friendship into a dark but tender treatise on hunger, compulsion, and identity. If you've ever loved—a person, a hobby, a song—so intensely it hurt, this mosh pit of a novel will offer you both sanctuary and feedback.” —Stephen Kearse, music critic and author of Liquid Snakes

“Mariah Stovall's I Love You So Much It's Killing Us Both turns up the volume on contemporary literary fiction in the best, most mesmerizing way.  This book is a blazing riff, completely on fire from the first propulsive chord. Khaki Oliver leads us on a captivating ride; she is, simply put, one of the most compelling narrators we have seen in quite some time.” —Jordy Rosenberg, author of Confessions of the Fox

"Lyrical, musical, and brilliantly offbeat, this debut traces the aches and pains of young adulthood with such clarity I couldn’t help but be transported back to my own adolescence. Our narrator, Khaki Oliver, is angry and lonely, brimming with nostalgia, and laugh-out-loud funny. She yearns, longs, hurts, and turns alive on the page; I feel lucky to have spent the duration of this book with her." —Diana Clarke, author of The Hop and Thin Girls