Kirkus-Style Review

 MY DARK VANESSA

BY: TIFFANY SHAW-DIAZ - RELEASE DATE: MARCH 10, 2020

A smart and ambitious 15-year-old enters into a relationship with her 42-year-old English teacher.

"I want it to be a love story. I need it to be that," lamented Vanessa Wye, when reflecting upon her relationship with her significantly older English teacher, Jacob Strane. When Wye was only 15, Strane began to groom her within the walls of her school, "From the way you write," Strane mused, "I can tell you're a dark romantic like me. You like dark things." What ensues throughout the narrative is a heartbreaking and gut-wrenching account of a doomed relationship that is rife with an unsettling amount of graphic detail. "He touched me first, said he wanted to kiss me, told me he loved me," Wye commented. "Every first step was taken by him." Wye's account of her abuse is woven into a non-linear plot that mixes present with past, all with the backdrop of the #metoo movement and other women, specifically former English students, who have come forward about Strane. As Wye begins to fully understand the psychological impact of her relationship with Strane, everything she thought she knew, including her perception of her relationship with Strane, begins to unravel. "I was an obvious target," Wye noted. "He chose me not because I was special, but because he was hungry."

This is a stunning debut novel that will haunt you for months, if not years.