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

'All he did was fall in love with me and the world turned him into a monster.'


''It's just my luck,' he said, 'that when I finally find a soulmate, she's fifteen years old.'' 

I received my review copy of My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. Thank you 4th Estate and William Collins for the opportunity to review this book ahead of its publication. 

My Dark Vanessa is one of the most powerful books I have read recently. In the current #metoo movement it is both eye opening and compelling. I'm sure it will be read and talked about endlessly once it's published next year. 

'You are all part of the problem.' Vanessa said relating to the uncovering of her first love as a serial child abuser. This book discusses themes which for many stay taboo due to the lack of knowledge on the subject and/or neglect of the society where it's easier to turn a blind eye on it. 

Vanessa is a 15 year old girl who struggles to find her own place and identity. She enrols into a prestigious boarding school where her vulnerability is groomed into an illusion of power over her teacher who abused her. 

Russell vividly pictures not only the impact child abuse has on their young adult lives but also how it always stays with them and affects their lives irreversibly. 

Most striking about My Dark Vanessa is the language of the book. It's urgent, raw and beautifully written in the form of a literary dialogue with some important literary works that mirror Vanessa's life. Vanessa sees herself in those novels and poems but she thinks she is the one with so much power to destroy her abuser's life that only with time she realises she had been spinning a web of falsehoods to cope with the effects of what she, with time, might label as abuse. It's moving to see Vanessa realise her idea of love was only a cheap trick to get her to do what was unthinkable even for her at times; times she reverted to putting herself in a parallel reality looking at herself and not seeing the obvious. 

Reading My Dark Vanessa was heart-wrenching and it was difficult not to stop reading some fragments. Not because they are uncomfortable to read but because so many people have to experience such abuse on a daily basis around us. Many victims won't speak for themselves as they are afraid of what they would be portrayed as and ultimately how they could be destroyed by those with power to silence those victims. 

Russell audiaciously walks readers through seemingly innocent beginnings of teacher-student infatuation, the darkness and wrongness of it outwith its platonic state to grossly manipulative behaviour of grooming, abuse and misunderstood sympathy or even love towards the perpetrators. 

My Dark Vanessa is an extraordinary and utterly powerful debut novel which stayed with me long after I finished it. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. 

From the point of view of safeguarding, open discussions about consent, social conformity, victimisation and sexual violence, this book is critical and should be read and talked about on many platforms.

Despite literary cannons, for example Lolita, I believe My Dark Vanessa will strongly speak up in support of the movement to silence abusers and give a voice to victims.

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

I had some initial reluctance towards starting this novel, firstly because i really didnt like the title (not getting the literary reference i just thought it sounded like some dodgy erotica novel). And secondly, because i thought it was a bit bandwagon-y, particularly with the similarity to Maggie's story in Lisa Taddeo's Three Women. However, what Kate Elizabeth Russell has produced actually feels quite fresh and the first half of the novel makes for very compelling reading. It inhabits the victim's adolescent viewpoint very convincingly, asking uncomfortable questions about the boundaries between acquiescence and consent. I was absolutely riveted to the grooming of Vanessa as it initially unfolded. However the story is told over two time periods and i did feel this was a more of a mixed success. As the two time periods edge closer together, there are points which become confusing and elements of story which disappear, possibly alluding to Vanessa's unreliability as a narrator. The ending feels rushed and a little too neat. However it was a thought provoking and compelling read.

Not sure quite what to say about this book, it is well written and gripping. Compelling reading, but I didn't find it shocking just rather tragic and sad.
The story of a precocious teenage girl who seduces her middle aged teacher. Well that's how she sees it.
It's a teenage crush taken to obsession but who is obsessed with who? It jumps about in time quite a bit which I found a little confusing.
Vanessa was a schoolgirl of 15 when she began a long lasting affair with her teacher. She is an adult now still in touch with Jacob Strane, the teacher who everyone insists abused her, whilst she continues to view it as the love affair of her life.
It has certainly made a lasting impression on her, so much that she still keeps in touch with her lover and even when he is accused of similar acts that people have said he committed against her, she defends him vehemently.
The one thing which sustains her, even now she is a lonely grown woman who drinks too much, is her own conviction of her own power, the knowledge that she instigated everything, she used her attractiveness, her wiles, her seductiveness to woo him. She revels in the feeling that she is a bad girl and she always will be.
She sees herself as some kind of femme-fatale with this power over men, she harbours dark desires, she is Lolita, she is different, she is special .... (the reality is she is flawed and she is broken)
She is unable to sustain relationships because everything she does and everyone she grows close to pales in comparison with the intensity of feelings aroused by her illicit affair with this older man.
But undoubtedly he was culpable, he was the adult he should have known better and he should never, ever have given in to the temptation of taking this pretty young girl into his bed.
Having lasting repercussions this is one affair which was never going to end well for anyone involved.
Dark, moving and compulsive reading.

This is a very hard review to write; I’m finding it tough to put into words how I felt about this book. I have wavered between giving it 3 and 5 stars, because I can’t say that I enjoyed it, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a good book. Obviously, the controversial subject matter is what makes it most difficult to define. I have never experienced this type of sexual abuse, so I am cautious of passing judgment on Vanessa and her journey. It’s also extremely explicit, so I would warn against reading it if you may be triggered by some of the content - or at least go carefully. The part I liked the least were the obvious and constant parallels drawn to Nabakov’s ‘Lolita’ - it felt a little lazy. But it kept me reading, I read it quite quickly, and it is an interesting look at themes of memory, abuse, love, childhood, adulthood, family, relationships - amongst others. I’d be interested to hear others’ thoughts, and where Russell goes next.

On the surface, this would seem a simple story. 42yr old man has an affair with a 15yr old female student. Big no. Case closed right? Well not really. The author takes us on a no holds barred, deeply nuanced and questioning look at exactly what this sort of relationship entails. Is it simply paedophilia – a lot of people would like the simplicity of being able to say it is, but unless you’re prepared to have a nuanced conversation, then you cannot effectively argue why. Anyone in a position of power should not be having a relationship with a minor in their power imo. But the author looks at blurred lines, at arbitrary numbers like the age of consent and statutory rape. She asks if any 15yr old is in the position of being mature enough to give consent, and what retroactively realising and removing that consent means for an individual. There are few clear answers but that is the point, I think. The line has to be drawn somewhere to protect minors so even if it is an arbitrary one, it’s there for a reason. It also looks at grooming and whether emotional abuse in the form of manipulation doesn’t make the question of informed underage consent moot. This is an uncomfortable and searingly honest book, but a very important one too. It’s very well written and seeks to make you ask questions rather than presenting you with conclusions. Recommended but treat with care.

TW: child sexual abuse discussed throughout this book, grooming, consent.

"'it's just my luck,' he said, 'that when I finally find a soulmate, she's fifteen years old'"

No lie, when I got approved for this book on NetGalley I had a mini freak out; this is a book that I have seen ALL OVER bookstagram for the last few months and really wanted to get my hands on it, so I am very thankful to NetGalley and 4th Estate Books for approving my request and allowing me to read a copy of this eARC.

This book has really been on my radar for a while because I saw the synopsis and was so intrigued by it. It's taken me a while to actually craft this review because I just don't feel like I can do this book justice at all. It is a really uncomfortable read; I am starting with this because if you don't think you can cope with reading a whole book about child sexual abuse, grooming, and discussions around consent, then I wouldn't recommend picking this up. It is very uncomfortable at times because you are reading this from the perspective of a teenager who simply believes she fell in love with her teacher. Vanessa doesn't see herself as a victim, although she knows that other girls in her position are victims she doesn't see herself as one because she feels she went in with her eyes open, and so a large portion of the book is her justifying their relationship, whilst also battling with the reality that maybe she was abused.

"it's a question, but he isn't really asking"

It is really harrowing but really good at the same time; Kate's writing is hauntingly beautiful and brilliant at the same time. You both sympathise with Vanessa but also get frustrated with her at the same time. As I read the eARC I was highlighting throughout any bits that were uncomfortable or hard to read and I damn near highlighted entire chapters. What made this so hard to read for me, was just how many people let Vanessa down when she was a child. It is quite obvious that the vast majority of the staff at her school knew there was some sort of relationship going on, the vast majority of Vanessa's peers also knew about this relationship, Vanessa's own mother knew about it!!! I was so frustrated that none of them really did anything or stood up for her, no matter what she said she was the child and she was owed better.

"I mean, she's obviously a slut. Who has sex with a teacher? Who does something like that?"

It's chilling, and harrowing, and complex, and so good. It starts off in an uncomfortable place and it doesn't stop, and it explores such an interesting view of consent and the power dynamics. It's a really relevant story for the time we currently live in and I think it is going to be really divisive for readers. I honestly don't know what else I can say about this book because I feel like nothing will truly do it justice.

"it's my birthday in two days, twentytwo. Seven years of my life defined by this. When I look back, I won't see anything else"

This book will be published 31st March 2020; I highly recommend you picking it up.