Book Review: Luckiest Girl Alive
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This is my book review of Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll
Book Summary:
HER PERFECT LIFE IS A PERFECT LIE.
Ani FaNelli is a teenager at the prestigious Bradley School. She endured a public humiliation that left her wanting to reinvent herself, become someone else.
So she gets a glamorous job, a new wardrobe, and a handsome new blue-blooded fiancé. Ani figures she is very close to living the perfect life. The one she’s worked so hard to get.
But Ani has a secret.
Long buried in her past, there is something private and painful that could destroy everything if she’s found out. If someone exposes her.
The question is, will breaking her silence destroy all that she has worked for? Or, will it at long last set Ani free?
My Thoughts:
This book is about a young woman with a difficult past. Every aspect of her life seems to revolve around the trauma when she was betrayed by her teenage friends.
As an adult, she is desperate to “reinvent herself.” To distance and insulate herself from these events. So she grabs what she wants, no matter the cost.
But none of that could cover the pain of what she endured when she was too young to understand the consequences.
What is rape? If you are the only girl there and get drunk with the boys, is it rape? Does it matter what you were wearing? Or whether you liked one of the boys?
This story is a dark and twisted journey. Sometimes it’s hard to read the words.
Written from the alternating viewpoints of both the present and the past, you will think you are reading about one horrible event. When you are actually reading about two events.
I think it is important to remember that most tragedies unfold on a seemingly ordinary day. Until it isn’t.
Jessica Knoll is an author, screenwriter, and producer. She is the New York Times best-selling writer of Bright Young Women, Luckiest Girl Alive, and The Favorite Sister. She adapted and executive-produced Luckiest Girl Alive for the screen, starring Mila Kunis, released on Netflix in 2022.
In 2021, she was named a screenwriter to watch by Variety, and in 2019, her original script, ‘Til Death, sold to Amazon and made The Black List. Her books have been published in over forty languages. She lives in New York City with her husband and daughter.
On a very ordinary day many years ago, my Dad died of a heart attack. It was 3 days before Christmas and those agonizing days that followed forever changed Christmas for me. Why do those wounds take so long to heal?
I'm so sorry for your loss, Vikki. I lost my daughter in August, so my grief is still new. I've been working hard on getting emotionally prepared for Christmas, and then just found out that a cousin who's in his mid-30s died two days ago. Now Christmas will be so hard for his immediate family, just as you've experienced. I've talked to others who've lost loved ones who say the grief never really goes away, but you can learn better coping skills over time. I just found out that Hospice offers up to six free bereavement counseling sessions, even if your loved one who died did not use the Hospice service at their time of death. I have gone to one session and will go again in a few weeks. Maybe you could check into that. The counselor who saw me was professional and so kind, and had information about coping with the holidays. (Thank you, Brenda, for allowing the opportunity for me to respond to another reader of your blog.)
Thank you JKAYE for the helpful information. It also helps to know someone out there is with us in sympathy. As time goes on, grief is like a wound that has healed over, but still hurts to the touch. I am so sorry for your losses and wish you Peace this Christmas and in the coming year.
I am so, so sorry for both of you. It's nice to see readers communicating with one another via this conversation.
I tried to read this and I only got about a quarter in. I just couldn't like this person. Maybe that's the idea, she's severely damaged, but everything about the main character just turned me off, and I found her so very unsympathetic, no matter the circumstances. Maybe I didn't read far enough in.
She was hard to like. But I felt there was more, so I soldiered on. And I'm glad I did.
So did you actually like it? I have a sample of this downloaded to my Kindle, I thought it sounded very intriguing.
It took me awhile to get into it, because the girl seemed so materialistic. But she was insulating herself with all these "things" because of her trauma. I'm glad I read it.