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It was very difficult for me to follow the plot of this book. My tiny brain was struggling to memorize all of the long ass names, and unfortunately I am not nerdy enough to have the system of society in Ancient Greece filed away in my brain. I was lost and confused and honestly a little bit bored, BUT I DON’T CARE. This was beautiful. It was queer joy, feminist anger, teen angst, and a wee little history lesson ALL IN ONE. The masterful way the author like spreads out the 21 year long plot line through out the book is masterful, and the characters and their individual actions are written so damn well, that I don’t even need to know the plot! The ending broke me, I was crying for literally the entire last sixty pages. This is the most beautiful story I’ve ever read. Not THE BEST, and certainly not the most interesting, but 100% the most beautiful. Achilles and Patroclus have the most heartbreaking love story of them all, I wish them nothing but happiness. <3

I kind of loved everything about this. The man is top tier in a way only a guy in a YA romance can be, the parents are all hilarious in a very “haha I'm Gen X and I’m dead inside let’s talk about it” kind of way, and the settings, THE VIBES, were TOP TEIR. It was the set up for a CUTE LITTLE COMFORT NOVEL. But the main character made me want to put myself into a paper shredder. I know a lot of her behaviors and bad habits are heavily centered around the death of her mother, and that is obviously valid, but her delusions, weird hate of other women just because a guy liked them, and insistence on being quirky, just DID NOT do it for me. I know that there are some pretty extreme Liz fans out there, but for me personally, she just kind of brought the book down, and made me WAY angrier than I should have been reading a freaking YA romance novel.

Everyone who I’ve ever heard talk about this book, either online or in real life, has talked about how they absolutely LOVE it, and how it made them cry and how it has a beautiful message about abuse and feminism as a whole. And while I do agree and really appreciate the message and themes, I didn’t love this one. Maybe I’m simply not the target age, and need to read it when I’m a bit older. But as of right now, though I appreciated this book and what it was trying to do, I was just kind of being a hater the whole time I was reading it. I was annoyed and angry the whole time, but for some reason I never quite felt sad. AND I’M NOT TRYING TO SOUND LIKE AN ANTI-FEMINIST OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT, OBVIOUSLY EVERYTHING THE WOMEN GO THROUGH IS ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE, I just didn’t personally connect enough to everyone to truly feel despair while reading this. I just felt angry at all of the horrible things that were happening, and annoyed at little things that characters were doing along side of that. But despite that, My Dark Vanessa still made me THINK. Though it’s not really connected deeply, and emotionally to my soul like other books I’ve read, I don’t think this is a story I will ever stop wondering and thinking about.