My Dark Vanessa

this book is horrific. everyone needs to read it.

god, what can i even say about this. this was an extremely difficult read but absolutely worth it all the way. i wanted to binge-read it, since that's what i do with every book that draws me in like this, but i genuinely couldn't do it. i had to stop reading and take breaks because i got sick to my stomach sometimes. this is definitely one of those books that affects your mood, so keep that in mind if you decide to read it.

jacob strane is truly one of the most well-crafted villains I've read all year. of course in the way that he doesn't see himself as a villain but the way that he was just so practiced. he knew exactly what to say to make vanessa question herself, to put her down just enough that it smothered her morals while also keeping her dependant on him for approval and validation. it was simultaneously enraging and heartbreaking to read the chapters when she was in school because you, the reader, can so clearly see the ways he's manipulating her and making her do exactly what he wants but vanessa is too young to see it herself.

thinking about all the years she lost to him will always make me want to cry. it would be awful enough that she went through all of this when she was young, but the fact that he stayed in her life and haunted her until the very end. even though she's in her 30s in the present day, in a way it's like he never let her grow up at all.

gunna include some of my favorite quotes under a spoiler because even though most of them don't talk about anything the book itself doesn't tell you in the summary (with a few extra actual spoilers), you should still be able to skip it if you want to experience it for the first time in-book:

“I wonder if it's possible for me to be arrested for having photos of myself. I wonder if maybe this is me turning into a predator, if the way I get excited around teenage girls says something about me. I think about how abusive people are always abused as kids. They say it's a cycle, avoidable if you're willing to do the work. But I'm too lazy to take out the trash, too lazy to clean. No, none of this even applies to me. I wasn't abused, not like that.” this is horrific. the way he's manipulating her from beyond the fucking grave, making her think that SHE'S a bad person because of her trauma

“To be groomed is to be loved and handled like a precious, delicate thing.”

in regards to her thinking about how he was in his 30s and how old she was when he got a vasectomy “...six, a first grader, barely a person and nine years away from being in bed with him,” this is nauseating.

“I wonder how much victimhood they'd be willing to grant a girl like me.” the way she doesn't think she's ENOUGH of a victim to deserve sympathy for what happened to her

“How can he be ready again? The bottle of Viagra in the bathroom cabinet, puke crusting together a lock of my hair. Him on top, his body so big it could smother me if he weren't careful. But he is careful and he is good and he loves me and I want this. I still feel torn in two when he pushes inside, will probably always feel this way, but I want it. I have to.” absolutely no words for this.

“I go on and on, parroting his arguments, the part of him left inside me suddenly risen and fully alive.”

“I tortured him,” I say. “I don't think you understand how much I contributed to everything. His whole life descended into hell because of me.”“He was a grown man and you were fifteen,” she says. “What could you have possibly done to torture him?”For a moment I'm speechless, unable to come up with an answer besides, I walked into his classroom. I existed. I was born.

‘Tipping my head back, I say, “He was so in love with me, he used to sit in my chair after I left the classroom. He'd put his face down on the table and try to breathe me in.” It's a detail I've trotted out before, always meant as evidence of his uncontrollable love for me, but saying it now, I hear it as she does, as anyone would—deluded and deranged.“Vanessa,” she says gently, “you didn't ask for that. You were just trying to go to school.”'

‘“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.”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 was an extremely difficult read and an absolute masterpiece.