Somewhere in the Haze is now officially available for preorder — and ahead of its November 6 release, we sat down with author Nadia Shafika to talk about the book, and what fans should brace themselves for.
What was the hardest part of writing this book?
Honestly, the technical challenge was capturing so many perspectives happening within the same event at the same time — making sure each POV feels distinct without repeating the same beats from a different angle. But the harder part, emotionally, was writing from Gabi’s perspective. It’s kind of depressing to tap back into, if I’m being honest. Every time I sat down to write her chapters, I had to sit in that disorientation with her, and that’s not always an easy headspace to keep returning to.
You’ve described this book using five words — hope, endings, beginnings, discovery, empowerment. How do those show up here?
That’s really the emotional skeleton of the whole book. It’s not just one of those things — it’s all five, layered on top of each other. There’s an ending buried in this book that a lot of people won’t see coming, but there’s also a beginning right alongside it. Discovery is the engine of the whole plot, honestly — not just Gabi discovering her past, but everyone around her discovering who they actually are without the version of the story they’d been telling themselves. And empowerment is where it lands. Hope is what gets you through the middle of it.
Without spoiling anything — what can readers expect from Mathew this time around?
More of him than they’ve ever gotten. But what it actually feels like to be inside Mathew’s mind is very different from how people think they know him. It’s kind of a definite, particular place to be, honestly — there’s a stillness to him on the inside that doesn’t match what’s happening underneath at all. I’m really excited for readers to finally get to explore that gap for themselves.
The cover is such a departure visually — icy blue, very cold, very stark. What’s the thinking there?
I wanted the outside to feel like what’s happening to her inside — fog, cold, a life they don’t recognize anymore. Nothing warm, nothing romantic in the traditional sense. I wanted it to feel like walking into a room you don’t remember, and it’s freezing.
It’s also meant to reflect the title. The first book was Valentine energy — falling in love, finding your person, the drama of discovering things for the first time. This one is the aftermath. One giant question: what do you do with all of it now?
Less romantic, more depressive, honestly. But hard times are golden… they’re what lead you somewhere better. That’s the shift from the first cover’s pink and sunrise to this one’s ice. Book one was discovery. This is the aftermath.
If Somewhere in the Haze could only leave readers with one feeling after they finish it, what would you want that to be?
Rewarded. And I mean that in a lot of different ways at once. Rewarded because we’ve finished this years-long journey together — readers have been sitting with this world for a long time now. Rewarded because there’s always an ending to every kind of catastrophe. There’s always an exit. You’re not stuck there, even when it feels like you are. There’s eventually an answer to everything, even the things that feel unanswerable in the middle of them.
And rewarded because there’s always something great to look forward to on the other side of it. I’m well aware that the kind of endings we do in the COLLIDED first install aren’t the settling, easy kind. I just want readers to close this book feeling like the wait, the heartbreak, all of it — it was worth arriving here for.
Somewhere in the Haze is available for preorder now on Google Play Books and Kobo, ahead of its release on November 6, 2026.
Google Books:
https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=Yv0GEgAAQBAJ
KOBO Books:
https://www.kobo.com/ww/en/ebook/somewhere-in-the-haze
