I received a free ebook version of this through Netgalley. Thankyou to both Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to read this! My review is still honest.

Woah. This book is a dark one, and if you're sensitive to the topics of abuse of pedophilia in any way, I would steer well clear. However, if you feel you can handle it, this is one of the most complex books I think I've ever read, and it is well worth the read.

My Dark Vanessa is, in a nutshell, the story of a young girl realising that the great romance of her life, the relationship she had with her teacher when she was 15, was actually a tale of abuse and manipulation. Vanessa has never thought of herself as a victim, and the way this treats the themes of victimhood and how clever abusers can be is really thought provoking and enlightening. It shows grooming in a way so you understand how it isn't clear to these young girls what's happening to them. There are moments in this that made me tear up, feel sick and disturbed, feel hopeful. It's a rare kind of book that can make you feel so deeply and widely.

The writing style in this was beautiful and very accessible. It's an adult literature book that reads almost like a young adult in terms of how easy the writing style is to read. I did feel the pacing was a little off, but it wasn't a major issue in my opinion. I was very impressed with this one.

It took me longer than anticipated to finish this book because it was a really tough read. The tale of a 15-year-old girl who falls for her English teacher was complicated and nuanced but also deeply unsettling. Shows the true impact that early trauma can leave on a person and very much relevant in the wake of the "Me Too" movement.

I ended up putting this down a few times because I wasn't quite clicking with it, it was perhaps a bit too slow for my personal liking, but eventually I did pick up again and finish. The writing is extremely accomplished and it's certainly hard hitting. In the end though the slow pacing and the loose ends made me lower my rating - I also didn't quite believe Vanessa in regards to how she ultimately viewed Strane.

This was at once an easy and very compelling read and yet a tough one. It shows the painful and long-lasting effects of manipulation and abuse. The book flips back and forth between times, from the 2000s when Vanessa’s is fifteen, manipulated into a relationship with her English teacher to 2017 when other girls come forward with their allegation of abuse by him.

I’ve read articles about abusive relationships and I know the definition and origin of gaslighting but having to read how Mr Strand manipulates Vanessa for years, how he lies and twists the reality of events was a whole other level. It’s infuriating and heartbreaking seeing him control the narrative of her life. The amount of bullshit he comes out with is staggering. Trying to make Vanessa believe she was the one who chased him, that she was the one to initiate it and she keeps having to remind herself that no, it was him. I don’t think I have hated a character as much as I hate Mr Strand. What makes it worse is the support that everyone in power gives him while humiliating and abandoning his victims. They find fault in the girls, calling them emotionally troubled, attention-seeking girls with a crush.

It’s hard reading how Vanessa desperately clings to the romantic fantasy of her abuse, but she’s so entrenched in his manipulation she doesn’t see it as abuse. Her recovery is messy, she clings to the romantic story, ‘I just really need it to be a love story’ because if she stops believing that she can’t carry on believing that the man who wrecked her never loved her, that what he did was never out of love.

This is a powerful, moving and painful book. It’s not a book for everyone but I think it’s an important one and I highly recommend it.

this book was not for me and I DNF fairly early on - my fault for not reading the premise of the book tbh and nothing to do with the authors work

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell is the debut novel from this American author, published by 4th Estate. Translated into over twenty languages, My Dark Vanessa has become a Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller. (Trigger warning: this novel and review contain references to mental and sexual abuse by a teacher towards a minor.) Inspired by her own experiences as a teenager, Kate’s novel focuses on a schoolgirl and the abusive relationship between herself and one of her male teachers.


SYNOPSIS

2000

After 15-year-old Vanessa Wye loses her best friend’s attention to a new boyfriend, she finds herself alone in school and under pressure from her mother to ‘fit in.’ She joins a writing group to improve her poetry and makes a new friend in her forty-five-year-old English teacher, Jacob Strane. For the first time in her life, she’s complimented on her looks and her fiery hair; for the first time in her life, she feels truly seen. He singled her out; he chose her over everyone else. Before she even understands the attention she’s receiving, Strane puts his hand on her knee, hidden under a work desk, but in front of the whole class. She is fifteen when they first have sex.


She loves him and he loves her. She finds solace in the copy of Lolita he gifts her, others have had a love like theirs before, but she knows society would never understand. As he said ‘It’s just my luck that when I finally find my soul mate, she’s fifteen years old.’


2017

Vanessa obsessively refreshes the Facebook post. How could this woman, another one of his former students, openly accuse Strane of sexual assault? That’s not what happened; Strane admitted to touching another girl’s leg years ago, but that’s all it was. He’d never loved anyone like he’d loved Vanessa, never had and never would. Surely it was just someone getting caught up in the #MeToo movement, because she was the only one for him. What they’d had was exceptional because she was special. It had to have been love because, after a life revolved around him, if it wasn’t….what was it?



REVIEW OF MY DARK VANESSA
My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell has been on my wishlist since mid-2019 due to the plethora of incredible writers whose quotes blanket the rear cover. When a debut novel is loved by the likes of Louise O’Neil, Stephen King and Sarah Pinborough, it’s hard to ignore. There was some controversy around the time of its publication that the content of this fictional novel echoed the contents of Wendy C. Ortiz’s 2014 memoir Excavation (which I have since added to my reading pile), which is when Kate stated:


“I would like to share with my readers that My Dark Vanessa, which I’ve been working on for nearly 20 years, was inspired by my own experiences as a teenager. I have previously discussed the relationships I’ve had with older men and how those relationships informed the writing of My Dark Vanessa. But I do not believe that we should compel victims to share the details of their personal trauma with the public. The decision whether or not to come forward should always be a personal choice. I have been afraid that opening up further about my past would invite inquiry that could be retraumatizing, and my publisher tried to protect my boundaries by including a reminder to readers that the novel is fiction. ”


This highlights the scariest thing about this novel; that this experience is not as unique as you may think.


After so much exposure, it can be hard for a book to live up to the hype, but My Dark Vanessa does that and then some. The general content and devastatingly sharp, evocative writing means this isn’t an easy read (their first sexual encounter led me to have to put the book down and take a few hours out), but it’s a voice I haven’t read before; following Vanessa from absolutely refusing to accept the truth about her relationship and seeing herself as a star-crossed lover, through to admitting that the relationship that shaped her life was much darker.


‘I need it to be a love story. I need it to be that.’


As well as eloquently explaining how Strane focused in on his most vulnerable student and managed to create the false image of her being in control on their relationship, the book also hits on some very prevalent points of growing up as a teenage girl.


‘Somehow I sensed what was coming then. Really though, what girl doesn’t? It looms over you, the threat of violence.

They drill the danger into your head until it starts to feel inevitable. You grow up wondering when it’s finally going to happen.’


My Dark Vanessa makes an incredibly compelling and thought-provoking read. I completely understand how some people may not feel a book such as this would be traditionally ‘enjoyable’ to read, and enjoyable is definitely the wrong word. Instead, this book is a chilling portrayal of manipulation in one of it’s scariest forms which is as important as it is unsettling. I cannot recommend My Dark Vanessa highly enough; this will be ranking high in my top books of 2020.

My Dark Venessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell is a very dark and disturbing read. The plot tells the story of the systematic sexual abuse of a child by a teacher and it goes on to describe the life the victim leads following her experiences. I find it troubling that there is so much emphasis on the child’s complicity, or rather, her perceived complicity.

It’s well written and I certainly wanted to reach the conclusion but It’s not a book I’d recommend.

Struggled with my rating for this one. It started so strongly and the chapters written in the past, during Vanessa's relationship with Jacob, were especially strong, but I found it weakened as it went on and it wasn't quite as compelling. At first I thought it was a definite 4/5 but the more I think about it, the more I feel was missing. I found the end lacking - I was expecting the final 30 minutes of the audiobook to be another chapter but it was an author interview, so that was disappointing. There were a lot of loose ends, and that could be intentional as it's a messy subject but it left me a smidge unsatisfied. Probably a 3.5 but rounded down because my review has come off a bit jaded. Strong start, weak end, and some things that felt odd.

Beautifully written and beguiling, My Dark Vanessa is none-the-less a challenging book. As the narrative guides you through the muddy water of consent and exploitation, there was never any question as to who the victim is but with maturity and a shift in dynamics the reader is required to take a more nuanced approach as an observer. Vanessa's story is one that will stay with you for some time.

A raw, heart wrenching and traumatic story, this is a dark and difficult read. It is also a powerful and important story.

We have all heard the stories of teachers and their students, but hearing it from the point of view the student in detail makes it even more harrowing. Kate Elizabeth Russell has gotten inside Vanessa’s head so well it fells like you are read her private thoughts in her diary. Vanessa’s continued denial of being a victim is so heartbreakingly common.

A stunning debut by Kate Elizabeth Russell, but it may take you a while to recover.

This was one of my most anticipated reads of this year and it absolutely lived up to my hopes for it! It follows Vanessa both in the present day and in the past when she had a relationship with her teacher Jacob Straynewhile she was still a student. Vanessa hears that a woman who went to the same school has accused Strayne of grooming and abusing her and she wants Vanessa to also come forward. She is stunned because she believes her and Strayne were in a loving relationship. As the novel progresses it’s very uncomfortable to read how Strayne clearly groomed Vanessa, and to see how she viewed it as a mutual attraction. It’s also hard to read how she has remained friends with him in all the years since. Over the course of the book Vanessa is forced to confront what happened between her and Strayne and it’s devastating. This book is so stunningly written and it never shies away from the reality of what happened to Vanessa. This is a book that will really stay with me and I highly recommend it.

My Dark Vanessa starts off as the story of a 15 year old girl who “willingly” enters into a sexual relationship with her much older teacher but ends up being a powerful exploration of the complexities of such cases, how an abuser grooms a victim, the complex relationship between abuser and victim and also deals with the issues of power and consent. Alternating between timelines we meet a 15 year old Vanessa who is experiencing the events as they unfold and thirty-something year old Vanessa who is still dealing with the psychological fallout. It also explores how victims often create their own versions events in order to regain control of the narrative. I thought his book was phenomenal, exceptionally well written and heavily features other literary works that have featured similar pedophilic relationships. A modern day Lolita story (a book that is unsurprisingly featured heavily in the novel). This is a very dark and uncomfortable read and should come with a trigger warning. If you like your fiction to be fluffy and light this is one to avoid but if you like your fiction to be of the literary kind and to force you to confront your own thoughts and feelings on such subjects and to perhaps give a little insight into why some victims refuse to confront and report their abuse then this is the book for you!

Thanks to Netgalley and 4th Estate Books for this ARC which I have only just got around to reading but will definitely be featuring in my books of the year list!

This book was really excellent. Thought provoking, provocative, disturbing, dark - I was completely immersed and didn’t draw breath for the whole first half. I wasn't sure where it was going after a key moment and that made it cleverer too. A really brilliant read - great for a book club discussion.

I found this book quite a frustrating read but for the right reasons. Witnessing the budding affair between Vanessa and Strane is enough to make any parent scream. He's so disgustingly clever at convincing her that this is different, that she is special the only one who understands him. The fact that as a reader you know Vanessa is still in contact with him just made me even angrier. Everyone lets her down, the school, her parents the whole system I could almost understand how the seduction had become the great love affair in Vanessa's mind.
My disappointment came when I didn't really feel that Vanessa had truly accepted Strane for who he was. The whole section with Henry felt unnecessary to me and just made the novel feel overlong and repetitive which was a shame as had it been shorter it would have packed more of a punch.

My Dark Vanessa is one of the most uncomfortable books I have ever read, but it is intended to be that way. Told in dual timeline, you flicker between Vanessa’s teenage relationship with her 45 year-old English teacher and her adult self being called to take a stand against the abuse he committed.

The complexity of Vanessa, as well as the supporting characters, was the highlight of this book. Vanessa’s (very) slow development of how she views the relationship unravels new but believable parts of her character throughout. We’re kept very close to Vanessa’s mind, with less dialogue and plot than you might expect, but the book doesn’t lag for a second.

In fact, the writing is so painfully close that I had to take multiple breaks whilst reading it. It doesn’t shy away from graphic realities and disgusting truths about abuse, it serves it up raw. As a result, some may find this book too hard-hitting, but if you think you can power through the troubling nature of it, I would recommend it.

I delayed writing the review for this book for quite a while since I was still sorting out my feelings about it and trying to wrap my head around the “controversy” that surrounded it for some time on Twitter. My Dark Vanessa is a very intense book and one that deserves time and needs time. So, now that I’ve had some of that, I can’t wait to write out my thoughts. Thanks to 4th Estate and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for a honest review.

My Dark Vanessa is a book perfectly fit to its specific moment in time where we are not just trying to out sexual abusers, but where we’re also re-examining what it means to be a victim, how one finds themselves in a situation where wrong and right become muddy. This was the exact situation we were in when I read this novel in March 2020 and I saw its relevance almost every day. We are currently in a very different, important cultural moment and although it is not linked to sexual abuse specifically, it is about power relations, about control, about who gets to tell the story and who gets believed. These broken power structures are so deeply ingrained in our cultures that even when you're looking straight at them you can't always name it. Reading books such as My Dark Vanessa, although fictional, give me a chance to redirect my gaze. And it's not comfortable, but it is necessary.

Vanessa is in her early thirties and so far she has just about held everything together. Nothing is quite right, nothing ever was since then but it's ok since nothing has gone entirely wrong either, as long as she keeps telling herself it was love. My Dark Vanessa is a novel about power, youth, judgement, fear and shame, but also about love. The overarching theme, in my eyes, is story telling, however. Who tells our story? Who has the right to it? And what if someone tells you your own story and you don't recognize it? I don't want to discuss too much of how Strane and Vanessa meet, how the end up entangled and what it means. There is no surprise in it, no shocking betrayals or unexpected twists. Russell does not pretend it is extraordinary, the story she tells, but she manages to highlight the sheer damaging confusion of it all. Is Vanessa complicit? Should she not have understood all the references to Lolita, should she not have taken the escape options available to her? And why can she not let go?

Vanessa is a fascinating character because she is difficult to read about. You'll find yourself feeling bad for not liking her, for not warming to her older self. And then you'll find yourself feeling such a strong, protective fury for the younger Vanessa that will take your breath away. My perspective of Vanessa switched throughout the book as you learn more about her past and present and as I kept finding points of similarity with her. So much of her is recognizable for anyone who has been a young girl, been a teenager in love with books, been a woman searching for herself. And you see all the traps that were laid out, the ones that you accidentally avoided and the ones you walked into with eyes wide open. Vanessa tries to work through her story and it's a hard journey to take with her.

Kate Elizabeth Russell has written a brilliant novel, one whose writing is key to making the story work. My Dark Vanessa made me feel physically ill while reading. Russell would have written something so innocuous it could have been overlooked and yet it began the spiral of deep unease in the pit of my stomach. With every further step Strane had Vanessa take, the unease would become acidic and threaten to spill over. It didn't make for a "fun" reading experience, but it was visceral and I think that is very important for a novel like My Dark Vanessa. When writing about sexual abuse and power relations, it is so easy to slip into sensationalism or virtue signalling, but Russell wrote something deeply emotional that will stick with me for a very long time.

My Dark Vanessa is a brilliant and terrifying novel that I have been recommending for four months now. It will grip you and you will have to occasionally take a forceful break away from it, but it is a rewarding reading experience.

This review will be live on A Universe in Words from 6/6/2020

I love her writing style Its an amazing debut novel and I know I will be following the author very closely from now on.
This book is a rollercoaster of emotions, You can see how she’s been groomed and how she’s been shamed and emotionally abandoned by her parents and let down by her friends. As in a way they all know what’s happening but don’t care enough to properly help her.
As the story is told by Vanessa POV so we can only see what she wants us to. I definitely needed to know more about Henry P. And what happen to Jenny and other people who try to be there.
Her voice is intense and relatable (all the women around me have experience a way of sexual abuse, very sad I know) I felt her pain and anger, the distancing from her own feelings and foggy memories being transformed into lies and doubt.
This book is not for the faint-hearted. It’s raw and very real. Read under the warning of sexual abuse, child pornography, drug abuse, teenage grooming. Isolation and abandonment.
As I read the arc I don’t know if this book comes with warnings or help lines, help websites I hope it does as this is a great story that needs to be read It might help other people come out and free themselves from the trauma.

Tipped to be one of the biggest releases of the summer, My Dark Vanessa is as dark as its title suggests. A powerhouse of a book which tackles taboo topics and lays them bare, leaving no stone unturned. I was contacted by the publisher and offered a chance to review this book last year, before it even appeared available for request. I'd seen the hype, I immediately accepted. But I'm a bad reviewer and I left this one on the shelf until now, close to publication. I knew this one was going to be tough, dark and disturbing and it definitely lived up to that expectation.

So, what is this disturbing, controversial subject matter? It's about a relationship between a 45-year-old teacher and his 15-year old pupil. The pupil is Vanessa Wye, and the story is told from her point of view as an adult looking back on the past when her old teacher Strane has just hit the headlines after a different girl has accused him of abuse. Vanessa then takes the reader back to her time at a prestigious boarding school, and the relationship that developed between her and Jacob Strane.

Their story is strangely fascinating. It's easy to see how Vanessa was drawn into Strane's web as he appears to single her out, make her feel special, making her feel that she has control in their relationship. "I have power. Power to make it happen, power over him."  It's enticing and exciting for a lonely and susceptible young girl discovering the power of her own passion. "He fell at my feel before he even kissed me. Can you imagine what that felt like, being fifteen and watching a grown man sink to his knees?"

But from an objective reader's standpoint, you can't help but notice alarming signs of a pedophile grooming. Vanessa is at a vulnerable point in her life when she meets him; alone in an isolated location, separated from her parents and recently estranged from her closest school friend.

Russell doesn't try to paint anyone a villain or victim in this novel, instead she explores these concepts and questions where a relationship becomes abuse. "I'm not a victim because I don't want to be, and if I don't want to be then I'm not. That's how it works. The difference between rape and sex is a state of mind. You can't rape the willing..."

Her character has lived with the aftermath of the relationship for the entirety of her adult life - the two actually kept in touch and attempted to reconcile their relationship over the years - and so Strane's hold on her has never let go. In the second half of the novel, Vanessa reveals more about her life following her time at boarding school and it's clear to see the devastating effect her past has had on every element of her - the failed career, relationships and a mild obsession with the magical age of fifteen, the beauty of youth she can't retain.

It's difficult to review or recommend this book because of the subject matter and graphic content throughout. It's not a comfortable read, it's certainly not a book you'd read for escapism. At some points, it's a little slow. But it is a thought-provoking piece of literary fiction, unlike anything else I've read, and it deserves all the hype it's receiving. It's an incredibly accomplished debut - a book almost twenty years in the making - and the author has created something insightful, compelling and powerful.

This book was pretty revolting, and I mean that as a compliment. Our protagonist is a mess, her one great love a predatory pedophile who targeted her from a position of power. I genuinely felt repulsed as I read this book, which I think is a compliment to the author. Even now (about 5 weeks on) I feel rage at thinking about the storyline. I think it could be a true story, I know that there will be those who read it and are able to identify someone who this happened to. It definitely made me think.

My Dark Vanessa was an extremely difficult and dark book to read but also a must read. I had to keep putting it down to walk away and process what I’d read but at the same time didn’t want to put it down. It was incredibly well written and has got into my head. The subject matter means it can’t really be called an enjoyable read but it is a book you want to keep reading.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the ARC in return for an honest and unbiased opinion.