Equal parts disturbing and riveting, My Dark Vanessa demanded my whole attention from the very first page. It's an undeniably important story that deserves to be told. But I come out of it reeling because it wasn't quite the story I thought I would be reading.
A troubled and lonely fifteen-year-old girl is singled out by her forty-two-year-old English teacher for special attention. He grooms her and manipulates her into being emotionally entangled with him. After a while, their relationship turns physical and sexual and clearly abusive.
Obviously, this is a graphic story and comes with all the trigger warnings you'd expect from something like this. Reading it was hard, and it was even more so to see firsthand how all the adults in Vanessa's life failed her, not just her abuser. There were so many signs that things were going wrong, yet her parents, her school, her other teachers, they all turned a blind eye so as not to cause trouble. As a result, they enabled and normalized the abuse and made Vanessa feel like she had no one to turn to.
But for me, it was her later life that was even harder to read. The author did not shy away from exploring the long-term affects of abuse. Vanessa reaches adulthood, and yet, she couldn't get away. She keeps going back for more, even though her abuser tries to cut off ties with her. He starts off as the aggressor, but their roles slowly become muddled. She obsesses over him, stalks him, reels him back in to their unhealthy relationship even though he tries to get out. When he doesn't give her the attention she craves, she tries to recreate their relationship with someone else.
To say Vanessa is the unwitting recipient through it all is to take the easy way out. And the author doesn't do that. Instead, she paints a complex, morally fraught, thought-provoking picture of abuse in all of its forms and consequences. Of course Vanessa starts out as a child and is initially the victim of her circumstances. But what about when she's in her twenties, or thirties? Can she ever truly move on, or has the abuse she endured robbed her of her agency and her ability to accept help and heal? There are no easy answers here, only uncomfortable questions.
This was such a distressing and unsettling read, and it left me torn up inside. It starts from a place that I was expecting and veers into a direction that was even darker and more complex than at first glance. Yet, through it all, I couldn't look away. It's definitely one of those memorable reads that will stay with me for a long time.
Readaroo Rating: 4 stars
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