Author : Kate Elizabeth Russell
Genre : Psychological thriller & Trauma
My rating : ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
Brief :
This debut novel written by author Kate Russel delves deep into the unsettling psychological tension between a gifted yet vulnerable teenage girl and her manipulative teacher. In the year 2000, fifteen-year-old Vanessa Wye, driven by ambition and a yearning for maturity, becomes enmeshed in a consuming relationship with Jacob Strane, her charismatic forty-two-year-old English teacher. The narrative captures the intoxicating confusion of youth, the way desire, admiration, and control blur together while exposing how easily innocence can be distorted into complicity.
Seventeen years later, as the world awakens to the #MeToo movement, Vanessa is forced to reexamine her past. When another former student accuses Strane of abuse, Vanessa faces a painful reckoning: to protect the version of her story she has always believed, or to confront the truth of exploitation beneath the illusion of love. Told through alternating timelines, My Dark Vanessa masterfully intertwines memory, trauma, and power, revealing how a young woman’s understanding of consent and agency can be reshaped by time and perspective. It’s a haunting, provocative exploration of self-deception, emotional captivity, and the echoes of first love that never truly fade.
My opinion :
My Dark Vanessa moves between 2000 and 2017, following Vanessa Wye as she is groomed and abused by her English teacher, Jacob Strane, and then forced to face the aftermath years later. As an adult, Vanessa cannot bring herself to see what happened for what it truly was, abuse. She carries the guilt and responsibility that should have belonged to the adults who failed her. The book captures the confusion and fragility of adolescence in an almost unbearable way. It is tragic, disturbing, and enraging, diving into the tangled emotions that come with power, manipulation, and trauma.
The sense of place in this story is striking. The cold and quiet setting reflects Vanessa’s inner turmoil, and the writing is so intimate and precise that it feels like you are living inside her head. Vanessa is drawn with painful realism, her denial, shame, and longing all feel heartbreakingly true. The author shows how abuse corrodes a person’s sense of self until they start to believe they are the one at fault. The writing feels tight and claustrophobic, pulling you deeper into Vanessa’s world even when you desperately want to escape it. Cultural nods to Lolita and the #MeToo movement add depth, placing Vanessa’s story in a broader social context that feels timely and unsettling.
By the second half of the book, I was deeply uneasy. Vanessa’s quiet self-destruction seeps through every page which had me wincing, but what really got to me was how some parts of the story made the abuse seem romantic or alluring. It made me uncomfortable in a way that lingered for weeks. This book left me drained, stunned, and unsure how to process what I had just read. But I think that is the point, it is meant to be disturbing, to make you question, to make you sit with the ugliness of it all. It forces you to confront how easily love and power can be twisted.
I can’t say I recommend My Dark Vanessa to everyone. I would only suggest it to readers who are prepared for something heavy and emotionally demanding. I picked it up at the wrong time in my life and regretted it, so I would tell others to tread carefully. This novel is difficult to read and even harder to move on from. It offers no comfort, no easy answers. But it is powerful and unforgettable, the kind of story that burrows under your skin and stays there long after you turn the last page.
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