One of the best written books I’ve ever read. Thoughts flow seamlessly into each other and keep you hooked from start to finish. At no point will you know where the story is going next.

It is an excellent commentary on society, femininity, patriarchy, and humanity as a whole.

All I can really say is if you are looking for a lighthearted book that doesn’t make you think…this isn’t it. But please read this book.

Loved this novella! 100% To Kill a Mockingbird vibes

A modern classic--beautiful writing, inventive characters with a unique point of view, and truly does an incredible job capturing the layers of humanity (& inhumanity) in a war zone.

Beautiful and terrible. This book healed something in me that I wasn’t expecting. Yes, it was incredibly triggering, dark, and harrowing. Seriously, if you have experienced abuse or are at all sensitive to abuse, PLEASE be careful picking this up. It is grim. There is no joy, and Vanessa experiences nothing but pain throughout the entirety of the book.

That being said, the themes that Kate Elizabeth Russell tackles are masterfully done. This novel is compared to Lolita for obvious reasons (and Lolita plays a huge part in the story as well), but the author adds a layer of complexity that brings it to relevancy in the modern era.

Vanessa (our stand-in Dolores) is very deliberately aged up to 15. She is young and naïve, but beginning to understand the adult world, adult desires, and grappling with emotions and feelings that many girls know too well. I appreciated Vanessa’s character so much.

Typically, when you read stories about abuse from the POV of those who experience it, they tend to be pictured very specifically; bright-eyed and innocent, they unknowingly wander into the wolf’s den and are snatched up and devoured. There’s almost a sense of tip-toeing around darker characterizations and inner worlds, a fear of adding complications to the “perfect victim”.

Vanessa, however, is realistic and complicated. She’s reeling with teenaged melancholy, trying to make sense of big feelings that nobody understands. She feels invisible, like she doesn’t matter and nobody notices her. So, when she’s presented with the opportunity to push the boundaries of what is right, and finds a supply of attention and adoration, she pushes it. She is naïve as any teenager is, but there is part of her that thinks she likes the danger and the attention.

Of course, she is innocent, just as innocent as 12-year-old Dolores or any other young person who experiences abuse. In no way am I implying that she deserved anything that happened to her, or implying that she was “asking for it”. Nor do I believe that she had “a darkness” within her that caused her to seek these things out (something that Jacob Strane uses to groom her and convince her that something is wrong with her).

She is a young girl experiencing big feelings in a world where young girls with big feelings are at best swept under the rug, and at worst ridiculed and humiliated. She’s too young to understand the depth of what is happening to her and the lasting consequences the experiences will have, but she’s not young enough that she doesn’t at least slightly understand her own desires and autonomy. Her relationship with Jacob Strane is, in a twisted way, her way to feel some sort of control and empowerment in a time where she has none.

Along the same lines, Jacob Strane is a better-written antagonist than is usually shown in these sorts of stories. I can’t say he is necessarily complex, since we don’t get his POV and he isn’t the focus of the story, but I appreciated the way the author chose to write him. In the book, he isn’t unbelievably handsome, incredibly intelligent or wealthy, or irresistibly charismatic. In fact, he’s an off-putting weirdo with anger issues and Vanessa herself admits that he is ugly, that he disgusts her. He doesn’t even know how to cook anything besides toast and eggs.

In the scenes where he manipulates and gaslights Vanessa, he is clearly pathetic, an insecure worm that needs constant reassurance from a teenager that he isn’t a bad person. He isn’t a supervillain mastermind who is able to manipulate anyone on a whim and turn the whole world against you. He’s simply an average man that exists in a system that enables him to take advantage of his position and power with no consequences. The scenes of manipulation and gaslighting are so chillingly well-done.

With that, the author also dips her toe into critiquing the systems in place that protect abusers like Jacob Strane. The school is complicit, with so many adults turning the other way, or making a cute joke out of Jacob Strane and Vanessa’s clearly inappropriate relationship. It also asks the question, when young girls are isolated by design, at once sexualized and infantilized, minimized and disbelieved, at what point are we all complicit in the abuse they face?

The contemporary inclusion of modern movements such as #MeToo and social media storms expound upon these questions even more. What makes someone a victim? What happens when the victim isn’t perfect, when the victim isn’t a rule-abiding, modest little girl with braces and pigtails? What if the victim doesn’t believe they are a victim? Or a survivor? How much responsibility should be placed on the shoulders of victims to speak out, and how helpful is it really for predatory journalists and activists to get involved?

Although it’s a smaller part of the story, I found Vanessa’s experience as an adult reconciling her memories of the relationship to be so well done. Again, in stories like this, there tends to be one narrative that follows the same plot beats. The victim fights, gets justice, goes to therapy, heals, maybe finds a new healthy relationship and lives happily ever after.

In My Dark Vanessa, the journey isn’t perfect. In fact, she has to do a lot of inner healing and deconstructing to even see herself as a victim. She hurts people. She uses people for her benefit. She destroys her body, her relationships, her mind. I loved, after page after page of grim realizations and horrific abuse, the teeny, teeny, teeny glimpse of hope on the very last page.

My Dark Vanessa is a realistic, if horrifying, depiction of the realities of girlhood and survivorship, and a poignant critique on systems that allow abuse of power to be so pervasive.

“A window opens, and I hear the cranes gathering to fly south.”

Oh, I finished this book with tears streaming down my face 🥺 what a beautiful story. While being with Bo in the present, you’re also carried back through the memories that shaped who he is today, all as the story traces the last moments of his life. The storytelling was sooo well done, with reflections on his life in Sweden throughout. I really loved the audiobook narration and experiencing it hybrid.

The present-day moments with his care team and his family felt so honest. The relationship between Bo and his son Hans, was extremely realistic, especially in showing the generational gap. The frustration Hans feels as he gets older, and even the resentment Bo sometimes carried toward Hans (along with my own frustration with Hans), came through so clearly. It shows how actions really do speak louder than words, and how difficult it can be to communicate feelings. And Bo’s granddaughter! Plus the true star of the book, Sixten. How I cried at the end!! It all wrapped up so beautifully and gave me the ending I wanted.

I loved so many moments in this book. You can really feel how Bo is experiencing this stage of his life and why. I felt like I was right there, truly understanding him, his love for his wife, who lives on in every memory, and his love for his son. Even his struggles with his own parents and moments of how he was raised. The way he notices how his son works too hard compared to the jobs he once had, how this generation never slows down, and he just can't comprehend it.

Through it all, the pride Bo carries, and his deep pride in his family, I just loved. It’s a sad story, but also so hopeful. Grief and caretaking are such strange, constant parts of life, and reading this book felt deeply healing for me. ❤️