4.5 stars rounded down. Physical book and eBook. I finished this book in three sittings. It is a very powerful book, but so disturbing. It contains very controversial subject matter and is compared to Lolita. This review is difficult to write. I must first say that I attempted to read Lolita and never could finish. There may have been some factors in my life that kept me from doing that. I was attempting to read it after I found out I was pregnant with a baby girl. As someone becoming a parent, I was terrified of my daughter being treated like Delores. I know the premise of the book and what happened. I was reading it because it is considered a misunderstood classic. Why do we read books like this? Lolita is a story of infatuation, passion, and longing. My Dark Vanessa is the same, but we see it from the perspective of the groomed, instead of the one doing the grooming. It also explores the idea of justice being subjective.

This story hit me hard for several reasons, but mostly because something similar happened to me when I was 16. It was not with a teacher, but my stepfather’s sister’s second husband, who was 47 at the time. No sex, but sexual abuse. Reading from Vanessa’s perspective was like seeing into myself. Clearly, older men are manipulative and can make a child think/feel whatever they want them to. Vanessa was obsessed, waiting for the opportunity and attention of this man. Muddled by my biases, I think it was meant to be harmless flirting and Mr. Strane saw it as much more. He saw it as an opportunity to fulfill his own desires, while Vanessa got the acceptance and approval she continually seeks throughout this novel. The knee touching and innocent shoulder pats turns into kissing and then teenage Vanessa experienced the sudden reprehensible act of sex with a man three times her age. I honestly don’t think she intended it to go that far and forevermore she was attached to this man.

Overall, Vanessa is unreliable as a narrator, which is to be expected considering. Often, I felt for her because I knew the emotions she was going through, but she is frustrating because as she gets older Vanessa clearly understands what he did was wrong, but she sees their “relationship” as different. I never once thought I was special. I knew the man was a philanderer and charmer and would stop at nothing, but I enjoyed the attention, never really having known my real father and never getting true fatherly love from my stepfather. Vanessa didn’t have those issues I did, but it was interesting that even when she was older, she still did not see anything wrong with what happened, expect when she was drunk/high enough to realize it; she would look for reasons to bring it up to people in her life. Strane denies her at every turn when she wants to be with him and share a life with him. It made my heart ache with each dismissal, each time she is reminded that she doesn’t need him. The section of the book where she is missing him was so realistic for me that it brought tears to my eyes and I had to set the book down.

This book was not a perfect 5 because the second half of the book is very repetitive and unnecessary. The point was made in the first half–no sense beating a dead horse. I will not read it again, as it hit too close to home, but I would recommend it for the character development, layering and perspective that really makes you think. Keep in mind that this book has some very explicit scenes that could be triggering. To me, it was cathartic in a way.