A review by nostoat
My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell

5.0

I want to hug Vanessa. I expect she would look at me like a freak for doing it and that's okay. This book is fucked up! Made my skin crawl and my insides squirm. But it's a good book, a book that doesn't shy away from the maze of overlapping and contradictory thoughts and feelings that a victim of childhood abuse will experience over years and years of interacting with the abuser, trying not to interact with the abuser, being pushed away by the abuser, etc. Vanessa is a teenage girl, and no teenage girl is uncomplicated, and Kate Elizabeth Russell does her the honor and respect of allowing her every bit of her complicated space on page. Bless every woman writing about complicated angry teenage girls going through unimaginable things, because they exist everywhere in the world and they should exist in books too.
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