My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell
Published: March 10, 2020
Genre: Contemporary fiction, thriller
Page count: 384
Goodreads
“2000. Bright, ambitious, and yearning for adulthood, fifteen-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her magnetic and guileful forty-two-year-old English Teacher.
2017. Amid the rising wave of allegations against powerful men, a reckoning is coming due. Strane has been accused of sexual abuse by a former student, who reaches out to Vanessa, and now Vanessa suddenly finds herself facing an impossible choice: remain silent, firm in the belief that her teenage self willingly engaged in this relationship, or redefine herself and the events of her past. But how can Vanessa reject her first love, the man who fundamentally transformed her and has been a persistent presence in her life? Is it possible that the man she loved as a teenager—and who professed to worship only her—may be far different from what she has always believed?”
I just want to make it clear that this is not a real “professional” review, more just my extended thoughts on a book that I felt like deserved its own post. Take my words with a grain of salt. If you want to read the book – read it.
I want to start by saying that I really wanted, and tried, to love this book. I wanted it to be one of my favorites and tried to love it as much as I could, but I just couldn’t do it. It wasn’t my expectations that were too high; the book actually met them to an extent, but it was more about how most of the book wasn’t even about what I was initially promised. I was promised a story about Vanessa Wye and her struggles as an adult with sexual abuse she experienced as a child; her relationship with her much older English teacher, Mr. Strane, at a boarding school. Instead, all of that was overshadowed by pages and pages and pages of events and dialogue and characters that did not matter or add anything new to the story.
Like a lot of others, I also felt that this book was way too long. I loved nearly everything about the book for the first 200 pages. At around 200 pages I started to get bored and began wondering how on earth this is still going to go on for another 200. The first half of the book really gripped me, it was interesting; it was amazing. The latter half just bored me to death and I found myself closing the book mid-sentence sometimes. The last 100 pages were a drag. Nothing happened after the 200 page mark. I would’ve been 100% fine if the book had ended at that point. The last 184 pages could’ve been cut down to 20, maybe 50 at max, and absolutely nothing would have changed. Why was there so much useless filler content in the end? (Not even in the end, literally half of the book is just there to increase the page count.) The college part was absolutely unnecessary and didn’t matter at all, I didn’t give two shits for her messy apartment and going to get coffee with Taylor. It didn’t even feel like the book I was promised after those 200 or so pages. It didn’t feel like it was all part of the same story. It felt like a completely different book with completely different characters that just had the same names. It felt like two different stories combined to one.
While on the topic, I think the ending also felt a little off. Sure, it made me feel nice, or maybe it was just relief that the book was finally over. It just felt off. It didn’t feel right for a book dealing with themes such as sexual abuse and trauma. I personally think it left so many things still unsolved and even felt a bit unrealistic in a way.
What I think would’ve been the perfect ending
If you ask me, the book could’ve ended when Strane killed himself and Vanessa stood in her apartment, thinking what would happen if she was to just light everything on fire after hearing the news and receiving the box. With some of the scenes from later in the book put before that, I think that would’ve been the perfect ending.What comes to the writing, it was very matter-of-fact and I liked it for the most part. The chapters set in 2017 kind of irked me, though, because mostly they were just endless repeats of “I woke up, checked Facebook, smoked a bowl, went to work, checked Facebook again, ignored Strane’s texts and calls, went home, smoked another bowl, checked Facebook, went to bed.” I found the chapters set in the past better in terms of writing since they weren’t only description of Vanessa’s feelings and surroundings like in the future, but something was also happening all the time and there was a certain tension. What I’m trying to say is that the chapters on Vanessa’s childhood weren’t just her inner monologue, unlike most of those set in 2017. Everything she endured as a kid felt real. It made me feel uncomfortable, as it should’ve, and realistically captured what some people actually go through.
Now for a few words about the characters. I didn’t like Vanessa as a protagonist at all. While she was extremely judgmental, she was actually really interesting for the first half, then just became really condescending and arrogant, and even started contradicting herself at times. I hated how she was always defending Strane and what he did to her, even though she knew it was wrong. She would say he abused her and then five minutes later say nothing of the sort happened and it was all consensual. With the story just going on and on and on, it made Vanessa so much more unlikable and erased the entire point of the book and even her character for me. She showed no growth throughout the story; she always went back to Strane no matter what. At first her actions and way of thinking were completely justifiable since she was just a kid and really thought Strane loved her, but 15 years later at 32 she should’ve already known better.
I’m not able to form my thoughts about Strane into words that would make sense or sentences that you would be able to read, and honestly have nothing to say about him other than I want to hit him, and hard. Preferably with a baseball bat or something of the sort. He was interesting as a character, but such a huge piece of shit and deserved to suffer so much more than he ever actually did. He was the embodiment of literally any other guy like him that exists in the real world and it made my skin crawl.
This book should’ve been one of my favorites. And, honestly, it would’ve been had it been 200 pages shorter and focused on the entire premise that was promised. Maybe I wouldn’t have minded all the “bad stuff” or all the filler content if they had been scattered throughout the book, and not shoved into your face for the entire latter half. The blurbs on the back of the cover call this book a masterpiece, and I can’t help but wonder if the people who wrote them were only sent the first 200 pages to read. I think I would also consider this a masterpiece if I had only read half of the book. The first half was the only part that lived up and was worth all the praise and hype My Dark Vanessa has been getting.
reading is ok, I guess 