Excellent account of a very difficult subject. The heroine is rounded, flawed, inconsistent and very real.

⭐️⭐️⭐️ 3 ok stars.

This book is well written and does a great job of describing and unpicking how clever paedophiles are in grooming their victims and ensuring they maintain secrecy.

It’s a difficult book to read but just because of the subject matter but also because it jumps around in time periods so much.

None of the characters are likeable which also makes it a tough read.

I can see all the 5 star reviews so I am in the minority but for me it was slow going.

My Dark Vanessa is a thought-provoking story, unsettling and uncomfortable at times. It took me a while to read and I was about to give up several times as it was quite slow and repetitive in places. The characters were well developed and realistic, but I found the structure with shifting time lines a little confusing. Overall, a reflective and memorable read but not one I'd recommend.
Many thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.

I can’t make my mind up about this book. I thought that it was a bit of an eye opener as to how people can be groomed and manipulated. I found some of the book hard to read. There is a lot to process. The characters all seem real and the events are believable.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.

Don't be misled by the pretty YA-style cover - My Dark Vanessa is a nuanced and conflicting take on both the #MeToo movement and teacher/student sexual relationships (in the vein of Notes on a Scandal), which I'm certain will cause a stir when it is released in early 2020.

The early parts of the novel follow Vanessa at 15 years old - in 2000 - begins having an affair with her 45-year-old English teacher, Jacob Strane. We then fast forward to 2017, where we meet Vanessa aged 32, working in a dead-end job at a hotel and living a pretty miserable life. It may seem obvious why her life as ended up this way, but the way Russell handles Vanessa's interpretation of the relationship in the intervening years was, to me, very well done. Allegations start to appear, accusing Strane of sexual abuse with other students, and this causes Vanessa to reassess her entire life since aged 15.

Highly recommended - Russell is one to watch for sure.

A fantastic book. Dark, twisted and shocking to read. 5 stars,

My Dark Vanessa make for uncomfortable reading. The subjects tackled in this book are not easy to read or, no doubt, write about. Russell's writing however is fantastic and powerful - you want to scream at Jacob as he makes his moves on Vanessa.

I can't wait to see what Russell writes next. Until then, I'll be recommending this book to others, it is one of the best books I've read this year.

Thanks to NetGalley, Fourth Estate and Kate Elizabeth Russell for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.

If you are looking for a book to cheer you up, warm up your heart or make you feel good about the world, this book will do none of those things. My Dark Vanessa is the ultimate 5 star novel, but it is not a light read.

My Dark Vanessa could be a story of a 15 year old girl who fell in love with her teacher or it might be a story of a 15 year old who was groomed and abused by a manipulative predator of a teacher. In any case, it is a story of a troubled but vulnerable girl yearning for love who is taken advantage of.

This book is perfection not because of its timely subject matter or the complex characters or the engrossing writing, but first and foremost the masterful depiction of the psyche of a 15 year old, her journey and coping with the aftermath of the abuse that follows her into adulthood. I don't know Kate Elizabeth Russell and I don't know her life story but one thing is clear from this book. She writes about what she knows and she does it brilliantly.

"I'm going to ruin you."

This book definitely ruined me, yet it is my best read of 2019.


Many thanks to 4th Estate and William Collins for a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

A giant of a book. Should be required reading in schools / colleges. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC.

A few typos:

pg. 100: 7th line: what are you names (your)

pg. 112: 2nd para, last line: by ear burn. (my)

pg. 116: 3rd last line: so you and her and friends? (are)

pg. 120: 3rd line: I would never wear so something flimsy (something so flimsy)

134: 8th line: These sessions should not be me telling you want to do (what)

136: 1st line: how he cook. (to)

pg 173: 3rd para: I always let the them sink in.

pg. 175: I take a breath. “If tell you about something illegal, are you required to report it?” (If I tell you) She answers slowly, caught off-guard. “”If told me you murdered someone, I’d have to report it.” (If you told me)

pg176: It take the phone out of my bag (I take)

pg 176: last para: Only if slept with him, how it started, or how it ended. (If I slept)

pg 177: 4th para: One the walk home (On the walk home)

pg 182: 9th line: how he closely he studied me when he asked (how closely he)

pg 186: 1st oara, 5th line: every evening my parents watch hours CNN (hours of CNN)

pg 204: 2nd para, 3rd line: so the ice must have melting (been melting/ melted)

pg 204: 3rd para, last line: while jerked off on the other line. (while he jerked off)

pg 220: 1st para, 6th line: It could be been two (could have been)

pg. 225: 3rd para, last line: compared what he endured (compared to)

pg 228, 3rd last line: I wonder if he always this slow (if he was always)

pg 236: 1st para: letting her know I where she’s trying to lead me (know I know/ am aware)

pg 244: 2nd para, 3rd line: when my works is critiqued (work is)

pg 246: 1st para, 6th line: and grabs me the throat (grabs me by the)

pg 248: 3rd para: Over the summer the first thing he said when saw the apartment (when he saw)

pg 253: 3rd last line: This is was what being friends with a girl

pg 256: dogear (dog ear)

pg 276: last para: I don’t dare ask the ones I really answers to.

pg 278; That’s it started with me,

pg 279; “but before you no one wouldn’t have jumped to conclusions like this.

pg 287, last line: “so what exactly he did he do to you?”

pg 289: “I think you’ve made him to he something worse than he was.”

pg 291: it’s hard to fathom understand the damage it could have caused.

pg 291: and I walk through the through the sqaure.

pg 298: I wonder if Henry calls her that or if he use a nickname.

pg 299: “This uncomfortable for me,” he says.

pg 300: “Because, you know, what did to me wasn’t rape rape.”

pg 304: harassing

pg 309: “Is anything happening now to make send you those things?”

pg 310: When Henry says that, I see is a stark white sky and an exapnse of

pg 315: “I can’t you read it. And you never told me?”

pg 316: disappearing a grove of Douglas firs.

pg 317: I’m started ton get concerned over here.

pg 322: “I don’t what you mean.”

pg 329: For years I wanted nothing but more than his eyes on me

pg 330: “There’s a reason I haven’t allowed myself remember,”

pg 334; ‘Dad and I used to talk sometimes about the way that school did to you,“

pg 334: “You were a kid. you didn’t know what it would end up doing it you.”

* I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. Thanks to Netgalley and Fourth Estate books*

My Dark Vanessa - what an amazing debut from
Kate Elizabeth Russell!

15 year old Vanessa Wye falls in love and engages in a sexual relationship with her teacher, Jacob Strane. Fast forward to 32 year old Vanessa, she is now caught up in the whirlwind of claims that Strane has also sexually abused another girl and is asked to come forward about her experience.

The book flicks back and forth as Vanessa explores her dark desires with Strane at the young age of 15 and the consequences of this relationship throughout her life.

Russell’s writing sucks you in from the very first page and captivates you throughout. She tackles some tough subjects and doesn’t shy away from the details. Some parts are quite difficult to read but for some reason I just couldn’t stop.

I believe the hype that this is going to be one of the best books of next year.

Disturbing and challenging read about the relationship between a schoolgirl Vanessa Wye and her teacher Jacob Strand. They are still in contact years later when another student accuses him of under age sex.
I found this book ever difficult to read and had to read it over several days because it was so graphic in places.
In the world of #me too it has an important message as to how power can corrupt and what this type of relationship can do to someone.

Goodness this book held me tightly from the first sentence. The story of a young woman who comes under the influence of her English teacher, then is groomed by him until she believes herself specially selected for his sexual pleasure and who while knowing it is wrong, feels unable to break away. Even when she bears the brunt of social and scholarly rejection as the truth starts to emerge, she can’t break free of him. To see him as wrong would mean letting go of her own identity as his chosen love. Although at times she sees him as the older, balding, slightly overweight and sad person that he is, she can’t stop herself from helping him, reaching for him and lying for him.

Her loneliness and increasing isolation are hard to witness. We want to reach into the book and help her yet she doesn’t want to be helped. The descriptions of her abuse at the hands of her teacher are painful to read. She wants attention and love and he is very skilled at giving her a lot of what she wants and little by little, taking what he wants. As an adult she is imprisoned by some inner saboteur who keeps excusing her abuser even when other young women come forward to expose him. Happening at such a vital time in her life as she formed her identity, the abuse has seeped into her being and it is hard for her to recover her Self.

A very compelling and complex book – it may be hard to understand the psychology of abuse – black and white thinking do not help us here but this book has great depth that helps us get a new perspective on both.

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell is about a girl groomed and abused by her teacher. Some parts were well written but there were issues with repetitiveness, for example she seemed to bite the inside of her cheeks on almost every page.

Vanessa is not unusual; she is a fourteen-year-old girl who is a little insecure in her peer relationships, clearly someone who enjoys the intensity of a special friendship more than others and, because of this, sometimes she finds herself out on a limb at school. Whilst she doesn’t know it, this vulnerability makes her prime material for her English teacher, Jacob Strane. For the first half of this tale of abuse and exploitation, narrator Vanessa casts herself as willing and expectant because that’s what she needs to believe she is as she becomes more and more malleable through Strane’s insidious grooming. To read of the sexual activities is, naturally, repellent and the reader is particularly saddened when, very occasionally and very quietly, we hear Vanessa’s suggestion that maybe she doesn’t want to comply, that possibly she doesn’t find any of this enjoyable.
In the second half of the novel after Vanessa has been removed from school and Strane seems to have been vindicated of all accusations, Vanessa begins to travel down a path of self-destruction whilst still seeming to enjoy her occasional connection with Strane, despite that fact that he appears to be a strange object of desire for any young woman. She drinks too much, takes drugs, has a very difficult relationship with her parents, is promiscuous and works in a job well below her capabilities. It is through all this that Kate Elizabeth Russell underlines the long-term effect of childhood abuse. It is only at the end of the novel that Vanessa begins to take very small steps towards the truth – and who can blame her? In the final pages she muses: ‘…for the first time, I can imagine how it might feel not to be his, not to be him. To feel that maybe I could be good.’ She has never been anything other than ‘good’ at heart and yet Strane has fashioned her to become someone she abhors. This is a very difficult novel to read but I recommend it. It’s an important story about the exploitation of power and the lingering damage done through child sexual abuse, told with great sympathy for the still injured victim.
My thanks to NetGalley and 4th Estate for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair review.

I was kindly offered this book by NetGalley, and due to the praise it has received, I started it today.

I made it to page 5. A novel of obscene tragedy, monstrous child abuse, a molester's lies and lies to serve only his sick needs.

My apologies to the author, whose prose and characters are well-presented, but I simply cannot continue.

It makes me cry in pain and anger.

Thank you to 4th Estate and NetGalley for an early copy of My Dark Vanessa.

What to say about this book? I could not put it down and I absolutely loved it. It is hard to say you love a book with such a difficult subject matter but Russell's writing was so perfect for this narrative and made Vanessa a very believable character and the story really benefited from this.

My Dark Vanessa tells of a 15 year old girl who finds herself in a relationship with her 45 year old teacher. The story is told from just before Vanessa meets him until she is in her early 30s and it looks at everything in between.

I would highly recommend this book and I look forward to Russell's next work.

4.5/5

Please note, trigger warnings for sexual assault.

This book was so raw and real. It definitely wasn't an easy read and uncomfortable at times yet I couldn't and didn't want to put it down. There were moments where it almost read like an autobiography rather than a fictional story which just made it all the more compelling.

The story centres around Vanessa. a 15-year-old student who gets romantically involved with a teacher, to her it was an epic love story but 17 years later said teacher is accused of sexual abuse by a former student and Vanessa is left questioning everything.

“I just really need it to be a love story. You know? I really, really need it to be that.”
“Because if it isn’t a love story, then what is it?”

It really does live up to its title of being dark but I would still read it all over again.

The story moves back and forth between Vanessa’s past and present. A past where she enters a relationship with a teach 30+ years her senior and a present where people are trying to get her to talk about that relationship. In no way is this an easy read, in fact half the time I found my self squirming in my seat at some of the prose, but it was also fascinating and un-put-downable.

For me it felt like the novel was possibly a Lolita from the girl’s point of view, maybe to the males she comes across as bold, confident and sexy but inside is a minefield and her actions towards men have been bread from her early interactions. Had she not been involved with an older professor would she have behaved the way she did with other men, would her life have been the same, is there something dark inside her? This book makes you really question what’s going on and whether, at 15, she can really say that she did want it.

“I never would have done it if you weren’t so willing,” he’d said. It sounds like delusion. What girl would want what he did to me? But it’s the truth, whether anyone believes it or not."

There is no doubting that she is a very astute and mature 15-year-old, but does that mean she fully understood what she was getting involved in? Does that make her less of a victim?
‘…I wasn’t pretty, I’d have to wait a long time before anyone noticed me because boys had to mature before they cared about anything else. In the meantime, apparently my only option was to wait. Like girls sitting in the bleachers at basketball games watching boys play, or girls sitting on the couch watching boys play video games. Endless waiting. It’s funny to think how wrong Mom was about all that. Because there’s another option for those brave enough to take it—bypass boys altogether, go straight to men. Men will never make you wait, men who are starved and grateful for scraps of attention, who fall in love so hard they throw themselves at your feet. ‘

I also feel that this novel comes at a pivotal time, when there are allegations flying, and asks some serious questions, is there any point in coming forward now, what will it achieve, is it beneficial to the individual to relive it all in such a public way? Not only does it ask these questions, it reminds us that every person is different and while some may need to expose it in order to get over it for others it may well just break them.

I can see this being absolutely huge next year, it will divide or unite people and will absolutely be all anyone is talking about. Thanks to Net Galley & 4th Estate for my ARC copy of this book.

Sadly a familiar topic regarding grooming and rape, but a well written book which will hopefully help strengthen future generations in their fight against sexual coercion and power.
Thank you to netgalley and fourth estate for an advance copy of this book.

I received an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review

I really didn’t expect where this book was going. I had initially been disappointed it wasn’t a “thriller” as advertised but in fact I would say it exceeded expectations. A slow burn at first but you have to stick with it to get to the goods. Can’t recommend it enough

After of a week of putting my thoughts of this book down on paper I think I’m just about ready to share them with you.
🤔
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My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell published by @4thestatebooks .
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This has been tipped to be the most anticipated read of 2020 and I can certainly see why.
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This book will hit the whole of your emotional spectrum so be prepared. It is dark, frustrating, conflicting, harrowing, heartbreaking and brave. It will make you angry, annoyed, upset and heartfelt. .
You will want to stop reading it as it makes you feel uncomfortable but yet the pull of it makes you want to read more to see the outcome of it. Unsettling yet compulsive .
Vanessa is in her thirties and what she believed was her greatest love story from her teenage years is now turning out to be something far far more sinister.
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Vanessa is a grade A student and has a really talent for literature and writing. She has a new English teacher called Jacob Strane. Little does she realise the impact that this man will have on her life.
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He gives Vanessa a lot of attention and she starts to idolised and look up to him. He slowly starts to give her more and more 1-1 attention. She has her first sexual encounter with him when she is 15years old.
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As she grows up and goes to college the relationship is still going on. She truly believes that it is true love.
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Now in her thirties she is forced to re-visit when it comes to light that there are allegations of sexual abuse by the very person she loved Jacob Strane. .
Vanessa has clearly been so well groomed that she defends her abuser and doesn’t even consider that she has been abused.
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Strane does not believe that he has done anything wrong and that it’s the imagination of the victims.
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It is such a bold and brave topic to write about as it is such a taboo subject. It is written from the past and present of Vanessas life. From the time the abuse started to the present day.
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You see the naivety-of Vanessa and the devastating effect it has on her throughout her life. .
I feel this is going to be the marmite of 2020. I’m sure it will stir up many