My Dark Vanessa was one of the books I’ve been curious about for some time because of the many 5-star ratings I’ve been seeing on my WP feeds as well as in Goodreads.
This is the dark and disturbing story of Vanessa Wry, who at 15 was abused by her 42-year-old teacher, Jacob Strane. The book is written in alternating chapters between Vanessa’s past and present life.
In as much as I want to like this book the way I was expecting to like it, I just couldn’t. This is a very important and note-worthy subject to read but I guess I was expecting to feel more like anger or something but many parts of the book just made me felt indifferent and bored. Moreover, I think that the story dragged too long and I didn’t find enough growth or character development from Vanessa. To be honest, I didn’t like her, I don’t feel for her at all. She was so naive to believe and trust everything Jacob tells her when it’s obviously full of crap.
Although I understand the importance of the hard subjects of this book, it didn’t turn out to be a great read for me. It was repetitive, vague and long with unnecessary fillers. I didn’t like a single character in the story as well. I do, however, acknowledge how the author showed how abuse affects young girls and how topics like this should be talked about more.
Quotable Quotes:
“People will risk everything for a little bit of something beautiful.”
“Sometimes it feels like that’s all I’m doing every time I reach out—trying to haunt, to drag him back in time, asking him to tell me again what happened. Make me understand it once and for all. Because I’m still stuck here. I can’t move on.”
“Because even if I sometimes use the word abuse to describe certain things that were done to me, in someone else’s mouth the word turns ugly and absolute. It swallows up everything that happened.”
Rating: 3/5 stars
I very much enjoy historical fiction, in fact, it is my favorite genre, and reading (or watching) about the Tudors is always highly enjoyable. This is my second read from Philippa Gregory this year, the first being The Constant Princess, which I should say I really enjoyed and learned a lot from. I wasn’t sure what to read next and I’m not familiar on the correct order of the books in the series so I decided to pick this up since it is what I’m familiar with.
The Book of Night Women is the story of a green-eyed girl named Lilith born in a Jamaican sugar plantation sometime in the 18th century where colonies are in transformation and maybe the worst time for slaves suffering from British cruelty.
Little Women has been on my shelves back home for like forever. I guess, it’s one of those classics that has always been there in the shelves even before I was born. It’s a shame that I only finally got to read it this year but hey, it’s better late than never!
I don’t quite remember how I first got across this book but as many of you know, I have a soft spot for Japanese literature and I haven’t read any from Natsume Sōseki so of course, I shouldn’t pass on this.
HappymessHappiness 