A big dream becomes true when 15-year-old Vanessa Wye is accepted at Browick, an expensive boarding school with an excellent educational programme. Immediately she is hooked by her literature teacher, Jacob Strane, who opens the world of books to her. But this is not the only world he introduces her to. It all starts with some glances, some minutes he makes her linger after class, a careless and random touch until it is what it should not be: sexual abuse of a minor and a student. However, this is just one view, for Vanessa, it is her first love, the first time somebody pays attention to her, tells her she is pretty, appreciates her mind and opinion. Of course, a secret relationship like this will not go unnoticed and when Strane and Vanessa are confronted with the accusations, it is her who is expelled. More than 15 years later, she still wonders how all this could have gone so wrong, they were only in love, that’s all.

Kate Elizabeth Russel’s novel really is a hell of a read. Using the first person narrator perspective, you climb into Vanessa’s head and get her thinking without any filter. More than once I was stunned, abhorred, terrified or just could shake my head in disbelieve. This girl – even as a grown up woman – is totally captured in her construction of the world, her oftentimes limited capacities of assessing a situation and the naivety with which she confronts her treacherous teacher is one of the best and highly authentic characters I have read about in a while. Even though I could hardly be farther away in my own thinking, I can easily imagine that her state of mind can be found in many girls who are insecure and a bit detached from her classmates.

This novel certainly is not for the highly sensitive. Child abuse and sexual harassment have been topics I have been faced with in my job and in my opinion, “My Dark Vanessa” is a superb example of how a molester gets closer to his victim and which techniques of manipulation he can use to make a girl or woman comply with his wishes. Blaming the victim for what has happened is one of the most loathsome strategies but quite typical and more than once I cringed while reading. Several times, Vanessa senses that something is not right, she feels maybe not abused but her wishes and needs are not respected but she does not possess the mental force or the words to express her position. Even when she is older, it takes some time for her to say it out loud what all that happened has to be called. Possibly her own understanding helped her to cope with the situation better than others, nevertheless, at 32, she is a total mess and far from mentally stable. 

A wonderful novel in many respects. Not an easy topic to write about, but an exceptional development of the characters and by using flashbacks also an excellent way of presenting two interpretations of the same incident, the younger and the older Vanessa are not the same anymore. “My Dark Vanessa” was highly praised as one of the most remarkable and important debuts of 2020 – I could hardly agree more with this.

A disconcerting  novel of our times In this authors first novel. It links to the “Me Too” . Vanessa relates the intricacies of her relationship with Strane 40 years her senior  but at the start of their ‘affair’ her teacher. They met when she was 15 and he lured her into his trap so that she felt that she was special and in love with him.?He is manipulative and she desperate to belong.  Her true angst and journey to realisation starts years later as she is in a dead end job and another girl, Taylor, exposes Strane as a paedophile. 
This is not an easy read with some harrowing passages and I feel it was a bit lengthy with some repititious thought meanderings.

"To be groomed is to be loved, tended to, handled like a precious delicate thing"

Very few books have the courage to tackle such a difficult subject with such honesty and that is what makes this book beautiful. My Dark Vanessa follows a 15 year old student who has an affair with her 45 year old English teacher. Russell manages to communicate so effectively how alluring being groomed is and how abuse is often romanticised by survivors in the aftermath. This book is so important. Not an easy read but a worthwhile one. Fantastic debut from Kate Russell; thoroughly recommend.

I was desperate to like this book. Absolutely desperate. The story sounded interesting, surrounded in darkness and drama but honestly it felt like a story from a real life magazine that was drawn out into a novel.

The editing hasn't been done for the download and there was no breaks to show when the story changed from the past to future so that made it harder to read. 

The ending bored me so much I skipped the last 10 pages and just went for the last paragraph. 

I wouldn't recommend this book.

Vanessa was 15 years old when she became involved with her 45 year old teacher. Now in her thirties, she finds the teacher accused of abuse by other past students and must come to terms with what happened to her as a teenager. 

This book is incredibly hard to read and utterly devastating. It brilliantly captures the world of a teenage girl, romanticising everything in her life, and also the doubt, uncertainty, questions and self-blame that so often comes with abuse. The novel very well-written, with tight prose and intimate descriptions. It is also riddled with literary allusions to Nabokov, cleverly adding layers to the story. Russell shows us exactly how Strane, the teacher, grooms and manipulates Vanessa, how he cultivates doubt, disbelief and dependency. The writing is incredibly effective and will make your skin crawl and your stomach wrench. As well as laying bare the horrors of the abuse, Russell exposes some of the implications of the MeToo movement with astute nuance - particularly how the movement allowed women who didn't speak up to be blamed for not preventing abuse. 

The pacing does lag in the second half of the novel as it becomes more and more difficult to read the abuse. However, Russell does wonderfully illustrate Vanessa's shifting perspective, the way her voice and thoughts develop and her rollercoaster of realisation, suppressing the evidence that the relationship is abusive because it is too painful, but finally coming to a full understanding. At times the detailed descriptions of the physical abuse can feel almost gratuitous, even eroticising it. Obviously the purpose of this is to present it from Vanessa's romanticised perspective but it is potentially excessive. 

I certainly wouldn't say I enjoyed reading this book, but I do think it was a necessary and important story to tell, and it is a very clever and well written exploration of the issue.

My Dark Vanessa is the debut novel from Kate Elizabeth Russell which looks at the relationship of a pupil and her English teacher at a boarding school, what at first appears to be a case of a teacher with a favourite pupil takes a dark turn as Strane starts to push Vanessa's boundaries and essentially starts grooming her.  Having recently fallen out with her best friend Vanessa welcomes the extra attention and English becomes her best subject, giving Strane plenty of excuses to lend her books and offer to critique writing away from the eyes of other pupils and staff.

Vanessa narrates from 2000 when she's fifteen and returning for her second year at Browick boarding school and from 2017 when she's 32 and working in a hotel and still in touch with Jacob Strane; their relationship is extremely complicated as Vanessa still struggles to see why everyone aware of their situation sees her as a victim and encourages her to speak out as others have begun to do.

I became very quickly engrossed in this and couldn't put it down despite it sometimes being difficult to read just because of the subject matter and this book did feel a bit like this book took over my life outside work for two days.  It didn't take long to feel emotionally involved, its a book that had me trying to shout at Vanessa through the page, just wanting the story to take a different turn and for the teenager to just walk away.

Towards the end, I did think this really lost its way which is what for me personally pulled this book down to 3 stars. We follow young Vanessa from the age of fifteen through to the end of college and personally I didn't think it needed those extra few years of her life.  Despite that I'd still highly recommend people read this and I think it'll be everywhere for the months following its release; there are probably quite a few people who may prefer to avoid this book because of the subject matter, I think it's fair to warn people that the rape scenes are quite graphic in parts but I did think it was well written and those parts were handled well, they added impact and to the depth of Vanessa and Strane's complicated relationship rather just being there to take up page space.

This is a dark and compelling read that will make you think and keep hooked. An amazing read with a great theme that will make you wonder and raise a lot of questions.
The author is a talented storyteller and you cannot help being involved in the plot following the evolution of the plot and the changes in the characters.
I don't know if I liked Vanessa or not, she's a complex characters who must face something huge and  terrible.
I know I loved this book in all its parts: storytelling, character development and plot.
It was an excellent read, strongly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

A dark yet captivating read! 15 year old Vanessa becomes entangled in a relationship with her 42 year old English teacher, Mr Strane. She is intelligent but naive, he is charismatic but creepy. Years later, allegations against Mr Strane surface from another student, that send Vanessa spiralling. This victim wants Vanessa to come forward too, but she views their relationship in a skewed way - was it abuse when she loved him? Alternating between the past and present, I couldn't put this book down. Some parts were horrifying; Vanessa is clearly being  groomed but she can't see past the man who kneels at her feet and apparently worships her brain as well as her being. This might be a tough read for some but I'd say stick with it. This is an impressive debut that perfectly the captured the bloom of first love and the horror of such manipulation.

Dark Vanessa- Boy I didn’t know how dark this story was going to be. But I should have know from the title. 
Bright, ambitious Vanessa a fifteen year old in that space between teenager and adulthood becomes entangled with her professor Jacob Strane. 
Strane who she meets at The Browick School in Norumbega is a predatory forty five year old man. 
The story moves between her teenage self and as a thirty two year old working in a dead end job and attending counselling and who still is under the influence of her old professor.
Strane uses a number of authors in his class for seducing her to enlighten Vanessa and introduces the book Lolita to her. 
As Vanessa believes she is the only one that Strane loves, the story unfolds to reveal that another young woman is is pressing charges against Strane and wants to talk to Vanessa about their shared abuser. 
This book is so real and is very difficult to read. The author has wrote this with such rawness you believe that it’s about her. But she actually reveals that it isn’t. 
I was frustrated, sad, nauseated and deeply upset when I read this. 
I was disappointed in the end as I felt that it just another day of sadness for the character - there was no future for her. 
The writing was engaging and moving and hats off to this new novelist. 
The reduced stars are simply for the jolting around throughout the story between past and present which I felt created the lack of flow and the fact that 
I can say I enjoyed the book but I can see others loving it. Be prepared for a novel that rips your insides out if you choose to read it. 
Thank you for the advanced copy.

Dark and utterly compelling, this story describes in detail the complexity of a relationship where all the power is one sided. The narrator is deeply troubled, and pulls the reader into an unsettling state as she takes us through the twists of her past and present, hinting at possible futures. 
Although definitely a book to come with a trigger warning for survivors of sexual abuse, nothing here is gratuitous or misplaced. The writing is flawless, the characters (too) real.

A very thought provoking book. We written. Making you think about grooming and how the teenage mind perceives it. Very appropriate book in this current climate of historical abuse cases. 
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the Arc in return for an honest review.
#mydarkvanessa #kateelizabethrussell #netgalley.

This a dark but also gripping. I did struggle with the details of abuse and grooming and the fact I have daughters, but it also opened my eyes and ears to what is more than likely to happen.
Would not recommend to those who have been through anything similar.
Thank you to Netgalley, Elizabeth Russell and 4th Estate for this ARC in exchange for an honest opinion

A very good portrait of how one thing can lead to another. Not always an easy or comfortable book to read, as it cuts deep, but perhaps that’s why it’s an important one to make time for.

Full Review: http://www.readingruby.co.uk/2020/03/my-dark-vanessa/

“It’s just my luck” He said. “That when I finally find a soulmate, she’s fifteen years old”.

My Dark Vanessa is stated to be an “era-defining novel” and I would have to agree. This story really opens up a discussion of some of the most complex issues our age is grappling with. It truly is “nuanced, uncomfortable, bold and powerful, and as riveting as it is disturbing”.

I have been hearing rave reviews about this one and it hasn’t even been released yet. I decided to pick it up, only having a brief idea of the synopsis. Oh, how I completely underestimated how dark this story was actually going to get.

“I want you to stop, I think. But I don’t say it out loud. I can’t talk, can’t see. Even if I force my eyes open, they won’t focus. My head is cotton, my mouth is gravel…A thought shoots through me. Is this rape? Is he raping me?”

My Dark Vanessa is an alarmingly realistic character study of a sexual abuser. Told from the perspective of our main character, Vanessa, groomed from the age of fifteen. The story skips between alternate timelines, analysing Vanessa and Strane’s ‘relationship’ across decades. ‘Relationship’ is a controversial term to use in this context, but this is truly the central conflict of this entire novel. Vanessa has been groomed since her youth and thus the lines between a consensual relationship and an abusive relationship are blurred for her. 

“It wasn’t about how young I was, not for him. Above everything else, he loved my mind. He said I had a genius-level emotional intelligence and that I wrote like a prodigy, that he could talk to me, confide in me. Lurking deep within me, he said, was a dark romanticism, the same kind he saw within himself. No one had understood that dark part of him until I came along”.

This story also opens up many conversations which are necessary to have in the wake of the #metoo movement, and when discussing abuser privilege. Throughout this book, there are occasions where victims are not believed and where an abuser is not even questioned. At one point Vanessa even recounts:

“Did he really think he would ever go to prison, a Harvard-educated…white man?”

Also, while this is technically marketed as a thriller on goodreads, there is nothing thrilling. The writing is compulsive but the story is the reflective character study. There aren’t really plot-twists etc. That is not what this book is striving to do. 

Overall, I think that everyone should read this book. It is uncomfortable, bold, graphic, horrifying…but it is also so very important. The story that this novel weaves is one of a very controversial abusive relationship. However, seeing this through the eyes of someone who does not classify themselves as a ‘victim’ and for someone who, through years of suffering this abuse, these lines are blurred. The main character finds herself questioning in this novel whether she was ever raped, whether she was a victim, whether her abuser was an abuser. This is such an important message, as to how victims (especially young, naive victims who suffer grooming for so long) can see their ‘relationship’ in a completely different light to an outsider. They can live in true denial. I honestly feel as though this could open up such a true, raw and honest conversation about abusers and victims and believing victims. Always believing victims. 

“I have power. Power to make it happen. Power over him. I was an idiot for not realising this sooner”.

You will find yourself being uneasy throughout this one, it is graphic and uncomfortable. However, it is also a truly important story. 

T/W: graphic sex scenes, rape, statutory rape, suicide, pedophilia.

Thank you to 4th Estate Books & Netgalley for a copy of this

My Dark Vanessa has attracted a lot of interest around the book community, and the likelihood is you’ve heard about it. It’s right that it’s received so much exposure as this is absolutely a book that should be read.

Telling the story of Vanessa, who at fifteen is groomed by her teacher and struggles to come to terms later in life that this was not in fact a love story, but sexual abuse and she is a victim . It’s one of the most uncomfortable books I’ve read, yet the writing is so utterly compelling that it is hard to look away.

My Dark Vanessa will certainly push your boundaries as a reader. As the mother of a fifteen year old, it horrified me. . It’s a difficult book to find the words to review. It’s excellent, but it’s also harrowing. The depths of Vanessa’s vulnerability are shattering and the anger and disgust it provokes are intense. This is a book that needs to be read. It will challenge you, unnerve you and will have you thinking about it long after you finish the last word

Breathtaking. Disturbing. Unputdownable.
These are just a few words that come to mind when I think about my experience reading My Dark Vanessa. Following two timelines, this tells the story of Vanessa - a fifteen-year old girl beginning a romantic and emotionally abusive relationship with her teacher at boarding school. The second timeline finds Vanessa at thirty, still in contact with her teacher Strane who is now facing heavy accusations about having taken advantage of multiple girls in his career as an English teacher.
This was absolutely harrowing to read - from the moments where Vanessa talks about not being abused because she wanted it, she wanted something to happen to later on realizing things she blocked out about their relationship, and how manipulative Strane was towards her, blaming her for his unnatural desires and letting her take the fall so he could stay a teacher with a pristine reputation, it all took my breath away. The glimpse of how deeply this "relationship" has affected Vanessa even in her older years is harrowing; every relationship, every interaction is shadowed and tainted by her feelings toward Strane.
This isn't a pretty book.
It's hard to read, even harder to stomach.
And yet, I feel like it's these types of narratives that are the most important to be read and talked about. I know for a fact that it changed the way I view moments in my past, the way men have manipulated friends of mine into thinking that they instigated situations just so they could walk away unscathed. 
Hard to stomach it may be, but I would nevertheless recommend it. This is a story that needs to be told.

My Dark Vanessa is one of the most anticipated novels of the year.

It’s both compelling and horrific.

There is no question that Strane grooms Vanessa. She is a bright but lonely teenager at a boarding school. Isolated and vulnerable she is the perfect target for him. He flatters her and lends her literature that appeals to teenage sensibilities – Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath and Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita.

Vanessa’s feelings towards him are complex. Throughout his manipulation Strane reinforces the fact that it Vanessa who is making the choices. He asks permission to do everything sexual before it happens. While sometimes she is disgusted and has moments of clarity, she also believes this to be a loving relationship and is able to repress the parts of him and his treatment of her that she does not like. She finds Strane exciting and enjoys the illicit nature of the relationship. It allows a isolated and lonely girl to feel special. However, the devastating trauma of the abuse is evident in the impact it has had on Vanessa’s future relationships.

This book is so dark.

As a teacher myself I found the ease with which Strane is able to hide his abuse quite horrifying. Other teachers and students raise concerns that are so easily dismissed as teenage girl crushes. Vanessa is blamed and willing accepts responsibility to protect her abuser.

I felt the first half of the novel, that mainly focuses on Vanessa boarding school and the build up of the relationship with Strane was fast paced and compelling. I found myself both wanting someone to intervene and end the abuse at the same time as wanting to find out what happens next. There are points when it is even possible to sympathise with the repugnant Strane which shows the quality of the writing.

The second half of the novel is slower. Vanessa is stuck in a cycle of depression and drink. She is both self-pitying and angry. She maintains her “relationship” with Strane over the years and he manipulates her to the very end. She is unwilling to believe she is “just another girl” Strane abused over the years.

This not an easy book to read. It’s dark and disturbing. It’s a powerful look at the complexities between abusers and victims, rape and consent.

I would definitely recommend it but it may be triggering for anyone who has experienced abuse.

Thank you Netgalley for the advanced reader copy in return for an honest review.

This wasn’t an easy read, but that is not to say it isn’t good. 

Vanessa is a complicated main character, I found myself never really liking her and at times wanting to throw my kindle across the room in frustration at some of her thoughts and actions. But this is where the writer shows that she truly understands what her main character is going through. Vanessa is conflicted, not thinking herself a victim when we the reader know that she definitely is, and this made a novel dealing with such a controversial subject matter so absolutely compelling. 

Really well written, I enjoyed how the different timelines all interspersed to create the full story. 

Thanks to netgalley for this copy in exchange for an honest review.

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell
This is a very difficult story to read as you know from the outset the damage which this relationship between Strane and Vanessa will wreak in her life.  We first meet Vanessa aged 11 at boarding school.  She is a girl with few friends.  Her one close friend has a boyfriend and now she is alone.  Her mother tries to encourage her to make friends with other people as do her teachers.  Taking their advice she decides to join a literary group.  However there is only one other member of this group which is led by her 42 year old teacher.  
The teacher begins to compliment her to tell her how special she is and she begins to seek him out. He uses the literature of the greats to beguile and seduce her.  She is lonely and he pays her attention when no-one else does.  This is a dangerous combination he is basically grooming her and inevitably the relationship becomes a sexual one.  When Vanessa is 32 and seeing a therapist to help her to cope with her father’s death Strane is accused, by another pupil , of sexual abuse.  Her story is posted all over Facebook and initially Vanessa defends her relationship with Strane.  
Vanessa believes that she entered into a sexual relationship with him willingly and that in many ways she led the relationship.  She believes that they had a very special relationship and indeed they are still in contact.  Her relationship with Strane has been the most important in her whole life.  
My reasons for not giving this book a 5 star rating would be that I felt it was overlong and some of the descriptions of sexual abuse I found too explicit and too emotionally challenging to read. Many thanks to Net Galley and the publishers for the opportunity to read this book in return for an honest review.

Vanessa is an ambitious and bright 15-year-old.
Jacob Strane is her 42-year-old English teacher.
But their relationship goes way beyond teacher-pupil boundaries.

The story, exploring the disturbing relationship between a naive teenager and her manipulative teacher, weaves between the present and the past and is told through Vanessa's eyes. We witness all that Vanessa goes through firsthand and learn how she perceives their relationship, and as she revaluates her experience we learn how it affected her future relationships and life in general.
This is a brilliantly written, dark, and compelling story that is unsettling and might be difficult for some to read.
That said, I found it very slow. It actually felt unnecessarily drawn out, and I think that it would have been better suited as a novella.
I conclude that this book simply wasn't for me, hence the rating. 
However, it is a striking debut, and if you're not sensitive to the subject matter, you should definitely give it a go.