A disturbing, thought provoking and compulsive story of grooming and it's impact on a 15 year old girl by her school teacher; will stay with me for a long time

Wow! What a debut! Uncomfortable, compelling, disturbing and dark, Amy Dark Vanessa won’t be for everyone but you will be missing a real gem if you don’t read it.

The story of Vanessa Wye and her relationship with her teacher Jacob Strane. When she joins a prestigious boarding school and falls out with the only friend she has, she is a vulnerable young girl. Always a bit of an outsider and a loaner, she is lonely and vulnerable and Strane 30 years her senior hones in on her and takes advantage of her isolation and loneliness.
Convincing her she is something special, an infatuation for him, he convinces her that she is the love of his life and that she is in control of everything that happens.

The story is told exclusively from the viewpoint of Vanessa, from the present day where she is 32 years of age, back when it all began when she was 15 and a little later in her young life when she is in college. It bounces back and forth between the three as the story slowly unfolds.

So, yes this is an extremely uncomfortable read and it’s not a very pleasant subject matter but it’s an utterly compelling read. The beauty of it is that it’s not just black and white like it could so easily have been. Don’t get me wrong, at no point do you think that Strane is anything less than a monster but Vanessa and her narrative make a good case for him to the reader and herself that he isn’t the monster he is. She is trying to convince us as much as she is herself. Her life has been consumed and defined by him. She has never admitted to people or herself that she is a victim. She sees herself as a willing participant. The relationship defines who she is and her life. To admit she is a victim shatters everything she believes about her self and her life.

She is also, dare I say not the most likeable character. Slightly narcissistic and aloof, she’s not the sweet little girl that could have been portrayed here as the innocent victim. It adds shade to the whole thing and stops it becoming an exercise by numbers.
Be in no doubt though. You never look at her as anything but the victim and Strane as nothing other than a monster. As I say there is shade added to both characters which adds hugely to the depth of the story but it is ultimately the story of a victim and a perpetrator.

It’s only January and this one is already in contention for my book of the year. The writing is brilliant. The characterisation is brilliant. The light and shade added to the obvious black and white is brilliant.

An utterly compelling read that will stay with me for a long time. Highly recommended.

Many thanks to Netgalley, 4th Estate and Kate Elizabeth Russell for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A conflicting and compelling read.

Russell not only tells the story from the perspective of Vanessa (both past as a teenager, as a college student and present in her early thirties), but as the reader you very much feel like you are experiencing every moment with Vanessa, transfixed, mesmerised and at times incredibly uncomfortable.

I imagine that I could have read this completely in a few sittings, if I hadn't felt so incredibly tense and stomach-churningly uncomfortable whilst reading - and believe me that is certainly not a criticism; Russell gives so much life to this story - a story which in recent years is being told in many iterations - as she forces you to consider consent, autonomy and victimhood from a perspective I'm sure many have/would not approached this story from.

My main criticism is that although for at least the first half, Russell’s storytelling felt fresh, unfortunately somewhere around the 60% mark it became repetitive and ever so slightly pulpy towards the end.

I can’t say it’s a story that I would particularly want to re-visit or re-read, ever, but it was certainly compelling enough.

All through the night reading this - I just couldn’t put it down. Deeply disturbing and harrowing, through Vanessa’s eyes you see grooming in action. I loved Vanessa, strong and yet so very damaged by those in charge of caring and nurturing her.

I predict that this book may well end up as a text book in schools, it really is that powerful.

A must read

Perhaps the 'must read' book of 2020 but more for the discussion it might provoke than for its literary merit.

The novel effectively portrays how predators can abuse and even rape vulnerable girls and women while somehow still making the victim feel that they are in control. And it raises some interesting questions about the culpability of others (here parents and fellow teachers) in ignoring, or choosing to be reassured, about warning signs and the agency of a victim to narrate their own story. The story's most powerful moments comes as Vanessa's own narrative of the events unravels and she sees her treatment for what it is, but I found the overall story too drawn out (the novel feels twice as long as it needs to be) and I didn't really find myself believing in Vanessa.

And for a book that draws heavily on literary sources, notably Nabakov (Lolita obviously, but also Pale Fire for its title), the prose didn't live up to its influences.

A solid 3 stars.

I DNF'd this book at 50%.

This is a really hard book to review. It's well written, with beautiful language, imagery and a well-considered plot. It's also a story that unfortunately is as old as time whilst simultaneously keying into the 'me too' movement. It's a story that needs to be brought to light and the book raises some interesting questions about how virginity and youth are fetishised in culture, from hit songs of the '70s to 'Lolita' and, in some ways, condoned.

But, the book made for uncomfortable reading. So much so, that I almost felt complicit in Vanessa's abuse. Whilst this speaks of the author's power at bringing Vanessa to life, and the way that she really got inside the head of an abuse victim, and the conflicting feelings experienced, it felt sordid and sad to read.

This is definitely a case of this not being the right book for me, but I would like to thank the publisher and Net Galley for the advanced copy in return for an honest review.

The subject matter of this book is not an enjoyable read and it is challenging to be confronted with it from Vanessa’s perspective. I will confess I didn’t finish the book as it simply wasn’t for me but the writing is engaging and well written.

Thanks for letting me review this book

My Dark. Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell is the kind of book that really gets under your skin.
The subject matter is so dark, yet the story so absorbing.
This book tells the story of Vanessa Wye, a 15 year old student who is being groomed by her 45 year old English teacher Jacob Strane.
Told from Vanessa’s perspective, and set between 1994-2014, this book was disturbing in so many ways.... Vanessa truly believes Strane is in love with her, and doesn’t see herself as a victim.
This was a gripping, raw read that had me thinking about it long after I finished reading.
I have recommended it to my friends, and I will look out for more works from the author.

Thank you to the author, publisher and Netgalley for allowing me to read in return for an honest review.

5stars

Thanks netgalley for an opportunity to review this title.

This book blow me away and was unputdownable! Its shocking and horrific and a brilliant debut novel. I can highly recommend it and will defiantly be recommending it to the 2000+ members of my online book club.

3,5 Stars rounded up to 4.

„My Dark Vanessa“ is one of the most unusual books I have ever read. It is dark, disturbing and even horrifying.

Vanessa is 15 when she meets her teacher Jacob Strane. She is different than most of the other girls. She likes being alone and she does not feel the need for friends. Like every teen she is hungry for attention and her growing interest in men is quite normal for a girl her age. Strane on the other hand, is a sexual predator. He likes young girls and he is very good at spotting the girl who will be the one to fall into his trap. He showers Vanessa with compliments about how special, how fascinating her darker site is, how brilliant she is and how matured. He is a master manipulator and he makes Vanessa think, that she is in control and that she always can say no. But Vanessa is submissive and naive although she sees herself as clever and grownup. She gets obsessed with Strane and this obsession will never stop.

The book is not an easy read and the story is also not easy. Strane is obvious a creep and very manipulative but there is maybe a different site to him. Or maybe Vanessa just wants to believe it. The story is told from her point of view in two timelines so we only see Strane through her eyes. She is so enamored and so influenced by him that she cannot let him go. Until she was 22 there was never another man than him in her life. She craves his attention, his admiration and his love because she does not get it somewhere else and she never tries to get it somewhere else. She needs this to be a love story.

This was such an uncomfortable read. It was hard for me to read what became of Vanessa and how she sugarcoated Strane and what he did to her. But the book asks also the question if it possible, under any circumstances, that Vanessa at 15 was maybe matured enough that she knew what she was doing and that it would be OK to be with a 45 years old man. I found the sex scenes to be cringe worthy and I am not sure if I really got what Vanessa was seeing and looking for in Strane. Vanessa refuses to see herself as a victim and that point gave me a lot to think about. I can understand that she does not want to be labelled as a victim and marked for life. But that made it harder to swallow that she did not see that Strane made her exactly that.

My only problem with the book was that it was too long and it is told very slow and detailed. It drags sometimes a little bit although the writing is very good. But there is too much detail, too much every day stuff and sometimes I got confused with the two timelines. I needed almost two weeks to finish it and it felt way too long, especially because it was such an uncomfortable story.

Vanessa, at 15: passionately in love with her 45-year-old teacher.
Vanessa, at 32: prompted by #metoo into reckoning with the grooming and abuse that has defined her life.

Told through the victim’s romance-warped lens, My Dark Vanessa ’s protagonist defends her abuse as a ‘love story’… then gradually comes to a different realisation. A young girl believes herself to be singled-out, special, passionately in love, when in fact she is being exploited. It’s a tale as old as time.

Charting that tale’s path, the novel is strewn with high- and pop-culture references: Titus Andronicus; Cadenus & Vanessa; Nabokov of course; films like Pretty Baby and American Beauty; 'My Sharona'; Fiona Apple’s ‘Criminal’ music video, Monica Lewinsky and Britney Spears. The more recent ones coincide with the novel’s late 90s/early 00s setting and are an interesting marker of the cultural distance between then and now—it feels wider than a mere two decades.

These references add cultural context: a history of glamorising and enabling such crimes and of sexualising young girls. Meanwhile, My Dark Vanessa presents us with its own salacious story and dark, gothic aesthetic of self-destruction. Integral to Vanessa’s perspective is her romanticisation of her abuse, so it follows that this novel describes abuse in romantic terms. Does it overstep and become that which it seeks to criticise? Russell deliberately keeps these waters murky. Maybe it was her intention make the reader feel complicit, or perhaps manipulated like Vanessa. Maybe not. I just wish there had been more beams of clear light cutting through the haze.

The story flows easily and it becomes impossible to put this book down. However, I never believed Vanessa was anything more than the author’s construct (which of course, all fictional characters are, but it’s the illusion of realness that we readers look for), and some of the writing here is pretty hackneyed.
Q: How many times can Vanessa bite/chew her lip/tongue/inside of her cheek?
A: 17, at least in the ARC version that I read.

If you’ve read Three Women, My Dark Vanessa reads a lot like the fictionalised version of Maggie’s story from that book. Both the details of the crime and the narrative voice are similar, right down to the odd portmanteaus (3W: ‘fearquick’, ‘shamehot’; MDV: ‘possumdead’, ‘antsmall’, ‘tender-condescending’). My guess is that if you like one of these books, you’ll like the other.

Every reader brings themselves to a book, and I think that’s especially true here. Your own experiences (or lack of), previous reading or engagement with this topic, demographic: these will all colour how you receive My Dark Vanessa. It’s certainly thought-provoking. Many readers will also find it powerfully affecting, but it was not that for me. 3 stars

*Thank you to the author and Netgalley for giving me an ARC in exchange for an honest review*

<b>4 stars</b>

This was a strong debut novel for Russell. I can't say that I enjoyed reading it, for obvious reasons. When I read books with this sort of story it feels like I've witnessed something I wasnt supposed to see, like I've been exposed to someone's dirty secret and I need a good shower to rid myself of that feeling. So, enjoyable? No. It was repulsive and raw. The impact of a good writer. I can't say much more without spoiling it. My only complaint is that it felt a bit dragged out at times and I didn't particularly like the way the book ended, but maybe that's the kind of ending a book like this called for.

I was drawn to this book as it featured I think in almost every 2020 book preview I read, on both sides of the Atlantic. A hugely hyped, zeitgeist-y debut novel attracting a huge advance.

Having read it, I can see why the fuss has been made - I expect this will be the most talked about and debated novel of the year.

It is a powerful but also deeply uncomfortable read: dealing with a subject matter which is dark but also very real.

It simultaneously confronts the reader not just with the terrible simplicity of the “act” (no one can only say crime) committed; but also simultaneously with the complexity of the wider issues raised: grooming, manipulation, victimhood, forgiveness (of self and others), consent, sexual agency, power dynamics, internet-shaming, avoidance strategies, guilt transference.

And perhaps most of all asking difficult but almost unanswerable questions about complicity: complicity of the silence of victims, of family (perhaps the most powerful scene in the novel features Vanessa, her mother and a dropped photograph), of authorities and establishments, of eye-witnesses and confidants, and even of an artistic world that celebrates Lolita as literature

An uncomfortable book to read and also to review.

It is also though a very tightly written novel, a horribly gripping and destabilising read infused with literary understanding and devastating and empathetic insight into character. Particularly remarkable for a debut novel in its focus and tightness.

My thanks to 4th Estate for an ARC via Netgalley.

5* Disturbing Stars

From the first page read I was blown away with the masterful story storytelling of the life of Vanessa. We first meet Vanessa as a 15-year-old scholar who begins a forbidden affair with her 42-year-old English teacher in the boarding school she is attending. The story then alternates between the young Vanessa who is growing close to and relying on her “predator” and the present day 32-year-old Vanessa who is living a miserable life due to the choices she chose. The whole story is told from her point of view and experiencing her innermost thoughts and emotions.

The author’s writing is so engaging and compelling! I am astounded that this is her debut novel, it is simply unputdownable! I have found a new author whose destined to have a great future.

This was not a light and fluffy read. The story of Vanessa was very real, dark and thought provoking. It is by no means a love story where two people fall in love voluntarily.

Many thanks to 4th Estate, William Collins and NetGalley for my copy to read and review.

Not my normal thing but I was attracted by the hype and thought that would make an accessible and gripping read. This book is excellent in the first third, sags in the middle and whilst i remember enjoying it more at the end I can't remember what happens (it has not been long since I read it). I found the scenes where Vanessa is at university particularly well done, the flatmate's difficulty in treating her as an adult able to make her own decision conflicting with the knowledge that all is not as it should be.

In this novel we follow 15 year old Vanessa Wye from 1999 to 2014. Vanessa starts as a boarder at Browick College when she is immediately smitten by her English teacher, Jacob Strane. He then proceeds to groom her, something the reader is aware of, but the young, naive and flattered Vanessa perceives as love and affection. The novel moves back and forth through the intervening years as the troubled and damaged Vanessa struggles to cope with her changing reality of the situation.

The subject matter is of course upsetting and will anger and frustrate. As a debut novelist Kate Elizabeth Russell has tackled a heavy topic in a way that engages the reader and that is no mean feat.

Thanks to Netgalley and 4th Estate for a review copy.

The story was told from Vanessa's perspective throughout; with the story taking place both in the past and present. This is a part of why it was so gripping that I couldn't put it down; as well as the story itself being so hauntingly tragic, yet full of hope and somewhat eye opening.

It made me feel somewhat conflicted throughout because although I knew the work is fictional, I still hated what has happening but I couldn't stop myself from reading on.

It's so sad to think that this story reflects the truth of what could have happened to many people in real life. It's terrifying to think that there are children putting themselves at fault and adults being vindictive and manipulative.

I was wrapped up in this story from the very first page: I could feel all of Vanessa's hopes for love and normalcy and then journeyed with her through her heartbreak, disbelief and denial. This book is so powerful and completely overwhelming.

A truely heartbreaking look into the mind of a young woman, Vanessa, who at the age of 15 is groomed and abused by her teacher and continues to let him dominate her very existance throughout the rest of his life.
The way Vanessa is lead to believe that she is half of the romance to eclipse all romances and that everything is her choice and she is in control is interspersed with little moments of clarity where she questions her actions- and more importantly his- but remains steadfast in her belief that she was not a victim of abuse but instead a heroine of age-gap romance.
In many ways this book is hard to read and emphasises the extremely upsetting reality of how easy it is for predators to groom young people in certain situations and how those children are expected to expose themselves in their futures if the abuser is identified by another, almost regardless of the impact on their emotional wellbeing.
Dark, difficult but definitely worth reading.

A star rating for this one... liked it, didn't like it, really liked it. It is a completely irrelevant way to approach discussing this book. It is a lengthy novel about sexual abuse, I mean, obviously you're not going to 'like' it... It is challenging to even decide where to start reviewing this one.

All the questions this book asks have incredibly obvious answers. She was 15, he was 45. He was her teacher, she was his student. There's no version of this that is not abuse. <i>So, that is it, right? </i>

But, that is where this book gets so good. To complicate something that uncomplicated, to take easy answers and instead pose impossible moral and philosophical questions. That's great storytelling.
Where do you draw a moral line? How do we decide agency? complicity? Why at 15 was it abuse, but at 18 it wasn't? What does saying 'yes' mean when the answer was coached? How does hindsight change perception? Can it be love then and abuse now?

This book could have been one-note, and exploitive, and gross. Instead it was thoughtful, unsettling, compelling and so complicated. I will be mulling on this one for a long time to come.

My thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the arc to review.

This book certainly focuses on a topical issue. Its surface level concerns the first love and sexual awakening of a young girl, the dominant issue is that the love is for her English teacher. The first-person perspective of Vanessa takes the reader into the world of Vanessa at fifteen years of age and we see how their relationship begins and develops. This is explored via the memories of the now thirty-two year old Vanessa, who has looked at the relationship as love, but other allegations of abuse from other students highlight another perspective. That the man she thought loved her, is actually an abuser: a monster.
This is not an easy read, but it is an addictive one and raises many issues. The pace is steady, and I did find it a little too long, so the impact lessened for me at times. I think sharper editing would improve the effectiveness of this read greatly. Saying that, it's a novel that stays with you and certainly opens your eyes and makes you think deeply.
A difficult but important read.