An excellent dissection of grooming and the irreversible damage these predators cause, this book makes for uncomfortable reading in places.

The stealthy progress of small boundaries being crossed, there were times when it made me feel physically sick. However as well as being topical it’s horribly plausible and as a treatise on hidden damage superb.

A timely story, very well executed. The development of the relationship between abuser and abused is well drawn and the reader is given a unique perspective  on a sadly familiar story.
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A disturbingly sad story that feels all too real. You feel for the main character and sympathise with her ruined life.

I wanted to read is because I have seen it everywhere of late.  I was not blown away by it by any means; in fact, I found it quite underwhelming.  Vanessa was an interesting enough character construct, but others were two-dimensional, and I did not believe in a lot of their motivations.

I didn't really intend on reading this book: there is so much hype already, despite it's release date being January 2020, since it addresses the 'Me Too' movement, and any comparison to Lolita will always put me off. However, My Dark Vanessa is nothing like I expected. The narrative switches between Vanessa's life in her thirties as other young women coke forward claiming that the English teacher Vanessa had had "an affair" with and a teenager had assaulted them, and her life as a teenager in a secret "relationship". Vanessa has always considered Strane the great love story of her life, one she repeatedly tells as an anecdote of her wild youth, and one that sets her apart from other women. However Vanessa defends her experience, The reader is in left in no doubt that she was singled out as a vulnerable child and groomed and gaslighted so that she believed that their sexual relationship was romantic, consensual, and something that she had actively pursued. I raced through this book with my heart in my throat, and while I can't say I loved it, it was a thrilling reading experience and a lot more thoughtful and nuanced than the sensationalist and shocking premise would lead you to believe. I definitely recommend reading it, but do so as soon as it comes out as the early reviews are correct: this is the book everyone will be talking about in 2020.

I enjoyed this more than expected. I thought it would be light and fluffy but there was some depth to the story. In a world where the USA chose a monarchy instead of a democracy, she explores the impact of being royalty on the personal lives of the royal family. The eldest daughter has the responsibly and strain of living up to expectations imposed on her. Will she be able to follow her heart or fulfill her duty? The second child is wild, rejecting her constraints. And the third royal appears naive and oblivious to the real world of competition and scheming. 

I found it a little slow to start but it did start to pick up. It's clearly a romance but it has some novel angles which keep it fresh and interesting. And it felt real enough that perhaps inspiration was taken from real life royals. Im thinking Britain and Monaco. Overall it is well interwoven and very readable. Like a compulsive soap opera I was hooked to see the fates of these likeable characters.

"I think we're very similar, Nessa," he whispers. "From the way you write, I can tell you're a dark romantic like me. You like dark things."

Vanessa Wye is a teacher’s pet. Or a ‘classroom pet’ as Mr. Noyes remarks when he catches 15 year old Vanessa and 45 year old Jacob Strane together. The comment given with laugh that might as well have been a nudge and a wink. In her first term at a new prep school, away from home, and without anyone to talk to, Vanessa is struggling to keep up. And she’s just lost her best friend to a boy, of all things. But her English teacher really gets her. He gives her books to read. Books that seem to hold special relevance, that resonate with the way she’s feeling, that give her new ways of thinking about herself. Books like Nabokov’s Lolita, an immediate favourite. He makes her feel special. And if sometimes she’s not entirely certain about the things that happen between them, if they maybe go a bit further than she was expecting…well, that’s ok because afterwards she’s almost definitely sure she wanted it to happen. That’s what he tells her anyway. And she believes him, because they’re in love...



Uncomfortable?? Get used to it. This book doesn’t hold anything back. If you think you might struggle to read a step by step guide to grooming and manipulation that includes scenes of sexual abuse, including rape, then don’t pick this up. It’s aggressively disturbing, deliberately and rightly so, told through the eyes of a girl who has so internalised her abuse as a love story that this twisted concept of youthful romance dominates her life. The narrative is told through two timelines, revealing her experiences as teen and adult, but both focus on the way she understands and explains her ‘relationship’ with her teacher. Especially when he is accused of sexual abuse by another ex-student and it seems like she might not have been ‘special’ after all.

*****

The author’s exploration of victimhood vs agency is challenging, apparently inspired by her own sexual experiences with older men as a teenager. The novel questions what it means to be a victim, as well as the exploring the relative power(lessness) of someone who is experiencing or has experienced sexual abuse/trauma. Anyone who has read Lolita will recognise the themes. My Dark Vanessa is both a response to/refashioning of that book and references the text throughout. Here though, we don’t get the voice of the Humbert/Jacob character. This book centres Vanessa’s emotional journey, the reader following her normalisation of a relationship which breaks the cultural, legal, and moral boundaries of contemporary society. Whatever ‘power’ she accords herself, it is clear that this is no equal relationship. Vanessa’s thought processes fall into a pattern of mitigating Strane’s behaviour rather than developing genuine notions of her own agency. As she searches for some kind of understanding, about her situation and the ways it makes her feel, she creates for herself a sense of validation through negative association. The endless litany of ‘i’m/he’s/we’re different’ is a heartbreaking process of justification that doesn’t prevent the reader from seeing that Vanessa is manipulated, groomed so well that her very idea of herself is warped to serve the needs of her abuser. The language he uses, the way he controls through guilt and threat and fear, the asking of consent after acting/doing so that he can always say he asked and received permission, the appeal to her love for him as a means of protecting himself from consequences of his actions… all of it forcing on Vanessa a narrative of herself and her behaviour that’s so convincing she believes it wholeheartedly. Her inability to understand what is happening to her fundamentally affects how she conceives her relationship with him, both as a young girl and later in adulthood. Her manipulated feeling is just one more facet of the abuse, a tool to ensure compliance. Because if this is her choice, then it’s also her fault. Poor Strane is lost to the love he feels for his Lolita. Nobody could possibly understand. What a tragedy.

Yet the complexity here is not about Jacob Strane, it’s about Vanessa’s experience and its validity, regardless of how it came about. Trauma is not easy to deal with, love is hard to let go. This is the heart of it all. If Vanessa believed in the love she felt, does it make it less true to her when others redefine what she experienced?

‘What he did to me wasn’t rape rape’,

Vanessa says when describing what happened. She’s arguing for her own emotional and physical action here, her involvement. But while she might not frame the sexual abuse as such, it seems pretty clear to the reader. As frustrating as it is, especially when continued by the adult Vanessa, the author perfectly demonstrates how and why she thinks the ways she does. It is never anything less than utterly, indisputably real, the straightforward, self-reflective style making it almost relatable. And utterly terrifying.

Still, it feels dangerous to me to allow for shades of agency within the framework of this type of coercion. Is there any difference if in one scene she’s penetrated before she consents or even really knows what’s going on and in another she invites him into her childhoods bedroom? What about the time she says stop or what if she orgasms? Do we need the specifics to decide what is or isn’t rape/abuse? What about the times she enjoyed it? Does it make her less of a victim? How does it change our perceptions of her to know and see these moments?

I’m reminded of another book: My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent. Not just because abuse underpins both stories, but because each girl has to manage the ever changing boundaries between what they feel and what they know. And the reader has to come to terms with the fact that what we know doesn’t necessarily change how they feel. In fiction, as in real life, the argument that ‘you can’t feel like that because I don’t want you to or don’t think you should’ has no relevance to someone’s lived experience. There’s an expectation to it, a demand that victims act how we want them to or they’re not really victims at all. For me, the culpability in this case is clear, but the hardest thing to take was that Vanessa didn’t necessarily agree.

"It's my life," I say. "This has been my whole life."

I have a feeling that this book is going to be divisive as hell and that means it’ll be BIG. The hype has already started, with Stephen King calling it ‘a package of dynamite’. I can’t argue with that, it’s a conversation starter to say the very least. I leave it with mixed feelings. It’s a well-constructed, timely story with seriously impactful writing that challenges the way you think. But perhaps there’s too much graphic detail? Whether I feel that way simply because I didn’t want to read vivid, explicit scenes of sexual abuse or whether the author made the wrong choice in putting so much into the story, I can’t say. My visceral reaction hasn’t lessened days later. I really didn’t want these mental pictures and I hope they don’t stay too long. This is why, in the end, it only got 4 stars from me. As much as the book is about trauma, victimhood, consent, and agency, all I can remember are scenes of coercion and rape.

Read it if you can, but really be aware of what’s within these pages. You won’t forget it, whether you want to or not.

ARC via Netgalley

Thanks to 4th Estate for an ARC.

First of all this is not an easy book to read. It’s dark, uncomfortable, disturbing but riveting.

Vanessa Wye was 15 years old when she began a relationship with her teacher Mr Strane.

Vanessa is now 32. Jacob Strane has been accused of sexual abuse by a former student. Vanessa is asked to come forward with her story.

Going back & forth, between past & present, Vanessa reveals her relationship with Strane. She believes it wasn’t abuse but love, her great love story. 

“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?”

We read Vanessa’s pain. She’s stuck in the past, everything she is comes back to Strane. As she says “This is been my whole life.”

But even through Vanessa’s denials you can see her doubts. From the very start, she questioned what he wanted, revealing her disgust, drifting off in her mind til it was over, letting him do it because it made him happy. 

Vanessa believed she was the powerful one, Strane told her she had all the power but ultimately she had nothing.

Jacob Strane is the best worst character I have ever read. His dialogue actually made my skin crawl, his manipulation drips from the pages.

An important book, especially in these times.

This book kept it’s foot on the peddle, I could not stop reading once I started. The narrator is self aware enough to recognise the pitfalls of her emotions but does not excuse the behaviour that is central to the book. A great story which pushes your boundaries

What a book. Sexually charged dynamite - draws us to question the accountability of bystanders, as well as our sense of reality and the stories we believe. Never conclusive, this novel brings the attention to the Me Too movement - and the spectrum of women who speak out, women not speaking out, and the impact on all their lives. Provocatively well-written.

A powerful book about the psychology of an abuse victim. I know of a real life case where a girl abused by a teacher at a similar age to the girls in the story is still with him and now has three children by him. There is an important conversation to be had about grooming and the psychological damage inflicted by it.

I am blown away by the powerful nature of this novel. This is one of the best written books I have read in years. Be warned, this book deals with dark subject matter, that of child grooming and protracted sexual abuse. 
But this book is necessary. 
This book truly gets inside the mind of the victim, Vanessa, and shows... 
It shows how she thinks she lived the love story of our times but was in fact the victim of the most predatory of men and it is heartbreaking. To see the workings of her mind as we go from fifteen year old youthful exuberance to a broken thirty something... 

The book alternates between Vanessa's past and her present as she unravels more of what happened to her. The book shows how she misremembered things and how that as a reader we can see the manipulation that occurred but then we get to see her perspective. And how she has this view of the world because of the insidious grooming that took place. 
And the grooming... Oh gosh it's horrible. As a reader you just want to scream and shout and ask why is no one doing anything. There was all this rumour and then evidence... 
And the world looked away... 
But all the while Vanessa is a child. And Mr Strane is three times her age...
This book is so painful. 
This book is an indictment on how completely lax we have been as a society. It is an indictment on how we have terms and sayings like it's not "rape rape" if there was perceived consent because she was a slut or nymphet type character, or if her body orgasmed then how could it be rape??
Rape is rape but this book dares to show up the darkest and most troubling belief's of society and makes us uncomfortable for having those societal beliefs. 
 
This book left me broken. It left me angry, frustrated... I want to scream from the top of my lungs about consent and what it truly means. I want to scream where was the protection for this child. How was she left singularly under this man's control. 

But I also love how this dares to ask questions about the agency of the victim. About how in this era it is somewhat expected that they reveal their stories to the world at large. How if one person comes forward that was a victim of a particular sexual perpetrator, other victims are again shamed and blamed if they too don't come forward. 
It asks to whom does the narrative belong to? 
Can a victim truly be sympathised with and respected if they wish to stay quiet? If they wish to live as normal a life as they can.
And that to me is where this novel is brilliant. It exposes the tabloid nature of the modern era and instead asks us to always respect the victim and their agency. 
And also to respect that because of the insidiousness of sexual abuse that these people, are not always able to see things as black and white. That consent to them is greyed because inherently no one wants to be seen as a victim. Everyone wants to be seen as strong and powerful. Of always being in charge... And this is portrayed in this novel as how the sexual predator always used gas-lighting techniques and honeyed words to groom his victim into thinking he was a helpless man that couldn't resist her nymphet charms. And Vanessa believed that. Even when she was being raped she believed it was sex, that it was nice, that he asked her if it was okay... even though he had already removed her underwear, was already engaging in oral sex with her, was already thrusting into her... he repeatedly told her it was nice and he said she was okay... 
Fair warning, this book is graphic in detail. But not in some gratuitous manner. It all feels necessary and integral to exploring Vanessa's mindset and how she was groomed. 

This book has already been praised by so many including the authors Louise O’Neill and Stephen King. And I fully echo their praising sentiments. 
The hype is real. This is the book that we need. That this book, although uncomfortable, truly gives voice to victims of sexual abuse and very much opens up the conversation about consent and agency over the narrative of a victim's life story. 

five stars. 

*I was invited to read an e-copy of this book by the publisher, Harper Collins UK: 4th Estate, via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.*

My Dark Vanessa is a novel about a relationship between a fifteen year old girl and her English teacher, looking at what happens when she has to confront what occurred between them in the wake of various sexual abuse allegations against powerful men coming to light. Vanessa is fifteen and lonely at her new boarding school. Her English teacher seems to understand her, though. When they end up in a relationship, she believes that it is love, and he desperately tells her that. But now she's thirty two and the teacher, Jacob Strane, is being accused of sexual abuse by another ex-student, she has to think about everything that has happened between them, through layers of trauma and what he managed to convince her was true.

This is no easy book to read. It has been described as a kind of reworking or subversion of Lolita, and Nabokov's novel is a central theme throughout as Strane uses it as a way of grooming Vanessa to see herself as the one with the power, and it is important that people are aware of this similarity and of the content of My Dark Vanessa before picking it up. It is, intentionally, deeply uncomfortable, as the novel is from Vanessa's point of view so the reader gets to see the ways in which she is manipulated and how this cannot be undone years later. Russell does well to get across the trauma and abuse that Vanessa suffers through the prose style, making scenes between her and Strane disturbing even whilst Vanessa is claiming it is love and it is what she wants.

It was difficult to read the novel without keeping an eye towards how it might end and how it would present Vanessa's story as a whole. Overall, it delves into the complexity of what Vanessa suffers, including the hard facts of facing up to a movement standing up to sexual abuse when someone was groomed to believe it wasn't abuse. In some ways, it feels like it highlights how certain elements of art— like Lolita, but also other references made in the novel—can be wilfully misread or interpreted to justify abuse and to manipulate people. It isn't a novel that ends with a big, unambiguous statement, and there is a lot to take in and think about rather than easy answers given.