What readers say
4.5/5 ⭐️ rounding up for goodreads - Picture ‘Lolita’ by Nabakov but from Lo’s viewpoint instead of Humbert’s and based in the early 2000s. Vanessa grows up in rural Maine, and earns a scholarship to attend a prestigious boarding school. She’s fifteen, living on her own for the first time, entering a new year of school alone with no friends. She’s placed in Mr. Strane’s English class, a subject she excels in, where she becomes captivated with him and forms a schoolgirl crush. Strane plays into the crush; he asks to see her after class, he gives her copies of his favorite books to read, he touches her knee and whispers in her ear outside the school dance. He stretches to see just how far he can take this fantasy; and Vanessa, young, naive, unloved, jumps at the attention. He grooms her from day one, guilts her, manipulates her, ruins her life. He has her attached to him on an invisible string. The story alternates from the day they meet, until present tense 2017- where Vanessa is an adult still being manipulated by the same man who has had a chokehold on her entire life. The story is dark, the author’s writing so beautiful. It addresses so many things that are usually not spoken about, from a POV we rarely see. I grew up watching so many of the films referenced- American Beauty, Lolita, etc. I understand the author’s (and Vanessa’s) obsession with these kinds of stories, the way you can’t look away, the way there’s just something to grab onto, the complex feeling of being a teenage girl under the gaze of an older male. There are so many quotes in this book that really stuck with me. Like I said about ‘Half His Age’- I’m really glad that I read this at 27 with my frontal lobe fully developed and not at 17. I also love that the title is in reference to ‘Pale Fire’ by Nabokov which I now need to add to my tbr. “people will risk everything for a little bit of something beautiful”
So heartbreaking. It was such a tough read sometimes because Strane is such a monster. Do not read this expecting a happy ending