This book is phenomenal!!!! Standing ovation! It deserves to be required reading. I am so angry at all the critics who read drafts over the years and told Kate Elizabeth Russell that Vanessa was unfathomable and the story should be from Strane's perspective. SHAME on those buffoons! Vanessa's psychology is COMPLETELY relatable, complex and contradictory and brooding; I love her, I See her, I am her. Not in a #MeToo way, but in an "I understand having conflicting emotions about a relationship which has failed in its promises" way. The entire teenage-to-twenties experience is captured so expertly: enjoying feeling powerful by literally flirting with danger; yearning for purpose and hidden meanings behind the mundane; self-isolation and melancholy feeling like a decadence which renders you intellectual, worldly, mature, and special; denying ugly truths and escaping into media or substances; second-guessing your perspective and memories; and of course the all-consuming pain of placing your value in a friendship/relationship/teacher's praise/any outsider's opinion of you, instead of learning to validate and build yourself.

And this book really isn't about "child abuse" at its core, not in a simple Victim and Villain way. Rather, it's about the fog and confusion, the gaslighting, the enabling, co-dependency, the mixed signals from something feeling both good and unhealthy at the same time - an amalgamation of contributing factors which make it difficult to just point at one overt act and say, "There, stop there, that's the bad thing." An entire system of relationships are involved: Parents and faculty turning a blind eye, journalists or concerned friends turning too critical an eye, the abuser painting himself as a martyr, and the victim having her own set of toxic behaviors... And everyone, everywhere, always being stuck in their own heads, never having quite the same perspective or recollections as another person, so how can anyone be sure what's "real"?! The out-of-body experience of trying to deny physical/sexual abuse pairs so, so well with the philosophical debate about "can we ever get outside our own minds and understand something another way?" The ending, with Vanessa grounding herself, reminding herself that she IS here, IS Seen, and is not just a floating fog of feelings with no control, was so moving, and universal. THAT everyone needs to hear.

To whoever needs to hear it today: I See you.

Read. This. Book.