My Dark Vanessa

Note: The last hour of the audio book is author interview.

I ended up being really impressed with My Dark Vanessa. I had two thoughts running through my head when I read this:
Would my younger self would have learned anything by reading this or just been disgusted (as I was when I went to see a showing of Lolita in my late teens)? Possibly. But adult me understood Vanessa-maybe too well. Everyone is guilty, especially at 15, of wanting to feel special. One is in a crowd just trying to find the one thing that makes us stand out. Maybe we are the future skate board star, the future drug king pin, the star of the stage, the star of the backseat of a car. Vanessa was the star of a forbidden love story (or at least, that's how she spins the tale to herself). She searches for others like her, in literature in movies and in the faces of other teen girls. Russell really made Vanessa real to me, as a reader- with one missing bit. I find it unrealistic when female characters in books do not worry about their physical selves. So much prep goes into being a woman, it seems unrealistic that she never worried about shaving her legs or how her lovers would handle her menstruating. But the book was long enough so I guess some things couldn't be covered.
Secondly, we are watching Dexter (he for comfort viewing, me for the first time) and Vanessa, like Dexter are both self-described “monsters”. Both characters are full of muddled values. Vanessa is a mess, but she is strong. She is brilliant. She is a coward, but also smart enough to get herself some help, to identify the need to heal. She is using her voice, in an anonymous blog- a cry for help that goes ignored by a hero. There's an English essay topic in there somewhere.
Lastly, it loses a star because I thought it could have been tighter if it had been 50 pages shorter. I felt repetition, I didn't care about the Henry plotline that seemed like a giant setup for a scene we didn't even get to witness as readers (just heard about later). I thought too much attention was given over to the journalist and the article being written- just for it to not go anywhere.
Overall it is an emotional read- it puts the reader through the paces. I found the ending to be super satisfying (and I don't say that very often).