My Dark Vanessa

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russel, 2020

My Dark Vanessa traces the life path of a teenage girl who is groomed into a sexual relationship with her high school professor as she struggles to identify whether what happened was abuse or not. The complexity of the main character in the story, Vanessa, is in her inability to recognize what happened as abuse and her subsequent shame and downward spiral into self-destructiveness. As the story unfolds, Vanessa is left to face the reality of a future male professor and mentor who takes a shine to her, and fearing that graduate school will lead to the same dead end, leaves her academic future behind.

This novel is a potent illustration of how grooming and abuse can confuse the victim's perception of whether her consent was freely given or coercively stolen. Further, this story highlights how victims can bond to their abusers, such that they will actively defend them.

Not all abuse looks like abuse from the outside. But sometimes, the reverse is true. Sometimes, everyone else can see it except the victim.