My Dark Vanessa- Kate Elizabeth Russell- Review

My Dark Vanessa (2020) isn't a relaxing, 'poolside' read. It's a read that is uncomfortable and rightly so. The book is centred around fifteen year old Vanessa who is abused and groomed by her forty-two year old teacher. The book covers the period during the abuse and the consequence of this in Vanessa's adult life. It's a hard book to review, because it's a fictional piece of work about a victim of abuse and who's to say how it should be written or portrayed.

First of all, the book is really interesting and eye opening. Especially as it's written from Vanessa's perspective, who is a direct victim of abuse. This can lead to some of the graphic scenes of abuse feeling somewhat romanticised. However, I can justify it as it's written from Vanessa's perspective, who doesn't believe she is being abused and views her relationship exactly as it's written.

Another thing I will say is that the book, in my opinion, is too long. I really struggled to finish the book towards the end, as I felt like the mundane descriptions of Vanessa's work and social life took away from her battle with recognising herself as a victim of abuse. I also found some of the dialogue between characters extremely repetitive, many of them were saying the exact same thing throughout the book and there wasn't really any progression. Vanessa's adult life also stays the same and the ending came so out of the blew and abruptly! I would have loved to have seen Vanessa confiding in other victims who came forward or even a sense of freedom for Vanessa.

The final thing I found difficult about this book were the secondary characters. Some of the characters felt like passing comments, that were so underdeveloped I started to doubt what relevance they had to the story. Ira, who is mentioned at the very start of the book, disappears after about 20 pages and is never talked about again. It almost feels as if Russell forgot the character even existed.