Book 64 - My Dark Vanessa by Katie Elizabeth Russell

Reading date  - February 2021

Before I start this review, I have a few things I just need to say.

1)I've started having Minor Figures Oat M*lk in my coffee and it's really a gamechanger.  I've had it loads of times in the coffees I pay for outside the house but I thought they did some kinda trickery to not make it split but it's not trickery cos I'm having a coffee right now and the milk is super smooth.  

2)Further to point one, I really need to get another milk frother.  My old one was from Tiger and it gave up the ghost, I replaced batteries and nothing happened.  I do have the Nespresso one but it's such a faff to get it out, plug it in and use it cos it's not involved in the machine.  I like a streamlined look in my house so keeping it out on the surfaces isn't an option.

3)I wanted to read this book for a while without having any idea what it was about.  Then I found out it was about a teacher who groomed his student.  Having been a girl who went to a school where there was a teacher who all the girls lusted after, I could kind of identify with the protagonist a bit.  I mean you should have been there when we knew we had English with this teacher between the ages of 14-16...none of the girls that smoked would smoke beforehand, we'd hitch our skirts up as high as we could, hair mascara would be applied like it was going out of fashion, mascara, eyeliner and sticky lipgloss would be applied with a fervour seldom seen since and then we'd move, a cloud of Tommy by Tommy Hilfiger announcing our arrival before you even saw us.  The biggest joke is that the teacher kept in touch with us (nothing untoward ever happened) and he is now a headmaster at a very good school and he asks us to come and give speeches to the girls about careers and errant teachers.  The girls couldn't understand how we lusted after the grey haired headmaster so we showed them photos of him 20 years ago (he is still buff, by the way..more now than he was before).

I can't say if this contains spoilers or not because you kind of know the storyline.

So, lets begin..

The basic premise of the book is a girl who is groomed by her teacher.  The book then splits between the time when she was groomed and molested (late 90s/early00s) and modern day.  The reason for this is that another girl has come forward with allegations..

This book is graphic in the descriptions of what happens to the girl.  It starts out with her going to class and realising the teacher is watching her, he touches her knee and then it all takes off.  She starts wearing makeup, they start kissing in the dark in his office and then finally he invites her over to his place.  Of course the inevitable happens.  I felt really creepy reading this because he was being a lover and a dad rolled into one..it was a bit manky.  It's quite sad because due to what happened at school, the girl now works a menial job at a hotel (she says as much herself, that's not me judging).

We flip between both time frames, she is constantly contacted by journalists asking for her side of the story...she then eventually meets the girl who has now made her allegations public and she finds out something shocking. 

This book is well written because it manages to convey to the reader the red flags (which everyone sees) but also how, as a teenage girl, you would totally ignore as it feels normal to you due to you not knowing any better.  There are times when she realises what is going on but then feelings take her over and she believes he feels as strongly for her as she does for him.  He is a horrible person and the book does hammer this home to the reader, everyone who reads it and meets him seems to know this but the poor girl being groomed doesn't, of course, until it is too late.

I would give this book four stars (lower side of four) because it's very en vogue with the #metoo movement and although it is a bit gloss-overy, I feel it's a good fiction book about it.  It makes you angry in places and in places you groan cos it's a bit cliche.  I liked that the girl didn't see herself as a victim which is how I assumed she would see herself but I think that's to do with the strenuous grooming the guy carried out.