{Release Day Review} My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell (@WmMorrowBooks)

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY’S BREAKOUT AUTHOR TO WATCH IN 2020

“Brilliant and stunning . . . an absolute must read.” – GILLIAN FLYNN

“A well-constructed package of dynamite.” – STEPHEN KING

A most anticipated book by The New York Times • USA Today • Entertainment Weekly • Marie Claire • Elle • Harper's Bazaar • Bustle • Newsweek • New York Post • Esquire •  Real Simple • The Sunday Times • The Guardian 

Exploring the psychological dynamics of the relationship between a precocious yet naïve teenage girl and her magnetic and manipulative teacher, a brilliant, all-consuming read that marks the explosive debut of an extraordinary new writer.

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?
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Alternating between Vanessa’s present and her past, My Dark Vanessa juxtaposes memory and trauma with the breathless excitement of a teenage girl discovering the power her own body can wield. Thought-provoking and impossible to put down, this is a masterful portrayal of troubled adolescence and its repercussions that raises vital questions about agency, consent, complicity, and victimhood. Written with the haunting intimacy of The Girls and the creeping intensity of Room, My Dark Vanessa is an era-defining novel that brilliantly captures and reflects the shifting cultural mores transforming our relationships and society itself.

Vanessa Wye could never be called a typical teenager.  She’s wickedly intelligent, disorganized to a fault and prefers books to boys any day of the week.  She also feels forsaken by almost everyone in her life.
  
The only time that she feels truly seen is in Mr. Strane’s American Lit class.  He speaks to her as if she’s a peer - not as if she’s just a child.  He understands her on a level that no one else does.  And it’s the most intoxicating experience she’s ever known.
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The repercussions of their forbidden relationship will bleed into every aspect of her life for years to come. Until the day when a single Facebook post shatters the illusion of the love that has come to define her. ​

“I think we’re very similar, Nessa,” he whispers. “I can tell from the way you write that you’re a dark romantic like me. You like dark things.” 

Shielded by the desk, he reaches down and pats my knee gently, gingerly, the way you might pet a dog before you’re sure it won’t turn mean and bite you. I don’t bite him. I don’t move. I don’t even breathe. He keeps writing notes on the poem while his other hand strokes my knee and my mind slips out of me. It brushes up against the ceiling so I can see myself from above—hunched shoulders, thousand-yard stare, bright red hair.

 Then class is over. He moves away from me, the spot on my knee cold where his hand has left it, and the room is all motion and sound, zippers zipping and textbooks slamming shut and laughter and words and no one knowing what took place right in front of them. 

“Looking forward to the next one,” Mr. Strane says. He hands me the marked-up poem as though everything’s normal, like what he did never happened. 
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The nine other students pack up their things and leave the classroom to carry on with their lives, to practices and rehearsals and club meetings. I leave the room, too, but I’m not part of them. They’re the same, but I’m changed. I’m unhuman now. Untethered. While they walk across campus, earthbound and ordinary, I soar, trailing a maple-red comet tail. I’m no longer myself; I am no one. I’m a red balloon caught in the boughs of a tree. I’m nothing at all.

​My Dark Vanessa is by far my favourite book so far this year!  With her hypnotic debut, Kate Elizabeth Russell weaves a tale that is as disturbing as it is soulful.  She made it so easy for me to relate to Vanessa on a very genuine level.  I felt her isolation, her complexity and her turmoil as if it were my own.  With every layer of her character that was peeled back, a more tender layer was revealed.  I saw her as a fragile warrior struggling to hold together all of her jagged pieces.  And her strength was awe-inspiring.

​“I just feel . . .” I press the heels of my hands into my thighs. “I can’t lose the thing I’ve held on to for so long. You know?” My face twists up from the pain of pushing it out. “I just really need it to be a love story. You know? I really, really need it to be that.” 

“I know,” she says. 

“Because if it isn’t a love story, then what is it?” 

I look to her glassy eyes, her face of wide-open empathy. 

“It’s my life,” I say. “This has been my whole life.” 
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She stands over me as I say I’m sad, I’m so sad, small, simple words, the only ones that make sense as I clutch my chest like a child and point to where it hurts.

This book clearly isn’t going to be for everyone. But for those who can look into the shadows and still see light, this is story that you will never forget…