My Dark Vanessa

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell
Reviewed by Mimi
📘📘📘📘📘

Hands down, the best book of 2020.

This novel is so hard to read so you might be tempted to read it quickly to get through it and yet I felt a duty to slow down and take my time.

This is a story about a young woman groomed by her teacher and in the era of #MeToo this is a story that needs telling. "All he did was fall in love with me and the world turned him into a monster" What do you do with someone who doesn't view theirself as a victim? Does Vanessa have a duty to other victims to share her story? Is she automatically enabling abuse by not speaking out? What about the people who knew and did nothing?

This is a version of the story not considered before and in her debut novel, Russell captures the complexity of Vanessa so perfectly and moves you through time in a way that allows you to really understand her side of events. At points my skin was crawling but I felt it was important to be uncomfortable and to question myself all the way through.

There is no doubt in my mind that Vanessa is a vulnerable child but if she doesn't view herself in that way, why would she the manipulation of her teacher as wrong? There is so much to unpick and Russell has handled an incredibly difficult subject area so well. This is a brave novel and can't have been easy to write.