Get a good book and a free hat.

Join now for $5.

We’ll make this quick.

First, enter your email. Then choose your move.

By pressing "Pick a book now" or "Pick a book later", you agree to Book of the Month’s Terms of use and Privacy policy.

Get a good book and a free hat.

Join now for $5.
undefined

You did it!

Your account is now up to date.

get the appget the app

Our app is where it’s at.

Unlock our Reading Challenge, earn prizes, and get notified of new books on our app.

Our app is where it’s at.

Unlock our Reading Challenge, earn prizes, and get notified of new books on our app.

Download on the App Store
Get it on Google Play

Already have the app? Explore here.

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell

Contemporary fiction

My Dark Vanessa

Debut

We love supporting debut authors. Congrats, Kate Elizabeth Russell, on your first book!

by Kate Elizabeth Russell

Excellent choice

Just enter your email to add this book to your box.

By pressing "Add to box", you agree to Book of the Month’s Terms of use and Privacy policy.

Ear-nings rewards

Ear-nings rewards

0/5

You’re 5 audiobooks away from a free credit!

Quick Take

A student-teacher affair exposes dark truths about the nature of the past and memory—a gripping, propulsive must-read.

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, Social_Issues

    Social issues

  • Illustrated icon, Nonlinear_Timeline

    Nonlinear timeline

  • Illustrated icon, Sad

    Sad

  • Illustrated icon, Forbidden_Love

    Forbidden love

Synopsis

Exploring the psychological dynamics of the relationship between a precocious yet naïve teenage girl and her magnetic and manipulative teacher, a brilliant, all-consuming read that marks the explosive debut of an extraordinary new writer.

2000. Bright, ambitious, and yearning for adulthood, fifteen-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her magnetic and guileful forty-two-year-old English teacher.

2017. Amid the rising wave of allegations against powerful men, a reckoning is coming due. Strane has been accused of sexual abuse by a former student, who reaches out to Vanessa, and now Vanessa suddenly finds herself facing an impossible choice: remain silent, firm in the belief that her teenage self willingly engaged in this relationship, or redefine herself and the events of her past. But how can Vanessa reject her first love, the man who fundamentally transformed her and has been a persistent presence in her life? Is it possible that the man she loved as a teenager—and who professed to worship only her—may be far different from what she has always believed?

Alternating between Vanessa’s present and her past, My Dark Vanessa juxtaposes memory and trauma with the breathless excitement of a teenage girl discovering the power her own body can wield. Thought-provoking and impossible to put down, this is a masterful portrayal of troubled adolescence and its repercussions that raises vital questions about agency, consent, complicity, and victimhood. My Dark Vanessa is an era-defining novel that brilliantly captures and reflects the shifting cultural mores transforming our relationships and society itself.

Content warning

This book contains mentions of suicide and scenes that depict sexual assault.

Why I love it

When #MeToo first went viral, I scrolled through Twitter with my heart in my throat, thinking of things I didn’t want to revisit, hoping the unstoppable wave of testimony might mean real change for women. Kate Elizabeth Russell roots her remarkable debut, My Dark Vanessa, in a similar moment of public reckoning.

Her protagonist, Vanessa, a hotel receptionist in her early thirties, sees on Facebook that a woman has posted an accusation about her high school English teacher, Jacob Strane. Vanessa, too, had a relationship with Strane, one that began when she was fifteen and a student in his classroom, hungry to be noticed. But the Facebook post challenges the story Vanessa’s told herself about what happened, the story Strane groomed her to tell. How can she live if her great love affair is a story of rape and abuse?

The novel travels backward and forward at once, a gripping structural move that kept me racing through the pages even when I wanted to look away. Vanessa charts her relationship with Strane in painful detail, from the strawberry pajamas he makes her wear on their first night together to their phone calls when she’s an adult. The narration is intimate, relatable, and sometimes frustrating—page after page, even with the benefit of retrospection, she refuses to see what’s painfully clear to the reader. But how can we ask her to measure the depth of her wounds? She’s still bleeding out. For Vanessa, Strane’s abuse and distortion exist in an ongoing now. In rendering her struggle to come to terms with what happened, My Dark Vanessa underscores the fact that there’s no one-size-fits-all version of the story of a man taking advantage of a girl. If there is a way to heal, I believe it requires making space for them all.

Debut authors
Weyward
The Stone Witch of Florence
Shark Heart
As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow
Dinner for Vampires
Ink Blood Sister Scribe
Lunar Love
Banyan Moon
The Collected Regrets of Clover
Afterparties
The Days I Loved You Most
The Wives
The Ministry of Time
The Astonishing Color of After
Did I Ever Tell You?
Middletide
Northwoods
A Flicker in the Dark
A Short Walk Through a Wide World
The Storm We Made
How to End a Love Story
Made for You
Here After
Adelaide
Spitting Gold
The Friend Zone
The Stars Too Fondly
The Ballad of Jacquotte Delahaye
The Other Valley
Maame
The Other Black Girl
Queenie
The Lost Apothecary
Did You Hear About Kitty Karr?
Paper Names
We Are the Brennans
People Like Her
Firekeeper's Daughter
The Writing Retreat
Olga Dies Dreaming
She Started It
Somebody's Daughter
Dearest
In the Weeds
Kaikeyi
Love & Other Disasters
The Fortunes of Jaded Women
Damnation Spring
A Little Hope
Camp Zero
The Last Story of Mina Lee
Ariadne
The Final Revival of Opal & Nev
My Body
Sisters in Arms
Honey Girl
Vladimir
Big Friendship
Black Buck
White Ivy
Luster
Miracle Creek
Three Women
White Horse
Someday, Maybe
Peach Blossom Spring
Maid
The Woman in the Window
What She Knew
Shrill
Church of Marvels
Lacy Eye
Home is Burning
Dear Mr. You
The Sound of Gravel
The Night Charter
Before the Fall
Rich and Pretty
Girls in the Moon
The Possessions
The Impossible Fortress
One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter
Startup
The Dark Lake
The City of Brass
The Philosopher's Flight
The Oracle Year
Sweet Little Lies
Goodbye, Paris
The Age of Light
The Winter Sister
Enchantée
The Field Guide to the North American Teenager
Opposite of Always
Beyond the Point
Wicked Saints
We Hunt the Flame
Again, But Better
Free Food for Millionaires
On The Clock
Mind Games
The Chestnut Man
The Ten Thousand Doors of January
When the Stars Lead to You
My Friend Anna
Red, White & Royal Blue
Dangerous Alliance
The Sound of Stars
All the Stars and Teeth
Star Daughter
The Girl in the Mirror
The Kindest Lie
My Dark Vanessa
Five-Star Stranger
The Singer Sisters
Debut authors
View all
Weyward
The Stone Witch of Florence
Shark Heart
As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow
Dinner for Vampires
Ink Blood Sister Scribe
Lunar Love
Banyan Moon
The Collected Regrets of Clover
Afterparties
The Days I Loved You Most
The Wives
The Ministry of Time
The Astonishing Color of After
Did I Ever Tell You?
Middletide
Northwoods
A Flicker in the Dark
A Short Walk Through a Wide World
The Storm We Made
How to End a Love Story
Made for You
Here After
Adelaide
Spitting Gold
The Friend Zone
The Stars Too Fondly
The Ballad of Jacquotte Delahaye
The Other Valley
Maame
The Other Black Girl
Queenie
The Lost Apothecary
Did You Hear About Kitty Karr?
Paper Names
We Are the Brennans
People Like Her
Firekeeper's Daughter
The Writing Retreat
Olga Dies Dreaming
She Started It
Somebody's Daughter
Dearest
In the Weeds
Kaikeyi
Love & Other Disasters
The Fortunes of Jaded Women
Damnation Spring
A Little Hope
Camp Zero
The Last Story of Mina Lee
Ariadne
The Final Revival of Opal & Nev
My Body
Sisters in Arms
Honey Girl
Vladimir
Big Friendship
Black Buck
White Ivy
Luster
Miracle Creek
Three Women
White Horse
Someday, Maybe
Peach Blossom Spring
Maid
The Woman in the Window
What She Knew
Shrill
Church of Marvels
Lacy Eye
Home is Burning
Dear Mr. You
The Sound of Gravel
The Night Charter
Before the Fall
Rich and Pretty
Girls in the Moon
The Possessions
The Impossible Fortress
One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter
Startup
The Dark Lake
The City of Brass
The Philosopher's Flight
The Oracle Year
Sweet Little Lies
Goodbye, Paris
The Age of Light
The Winter Sister
Enchantée
The Field Guide to the North American Teenager
Opposite of Always
Beyond the Point
Wicked Saints
We Hunt the Flame
Again, But Better
Free Food for Millionaires
On The Clock
Mind Games
The Chestnut Man
The Ten Thousand Doors of January
When the Stars Lead to You
My Friend Anna
Red, White & Royal Blue
Dangerous Alliance
The Sound of Stars
All the Stars and Teeth
Star Daughter
The Girl in the Mirror
The Kindest Lie
My Dark Vanessa
Five-Star Stranger
The Singer Sisters