My Dark Vanessa was a gripping read with more descriptions than I could almost handle of the protagonist's descent into a scarring, traumatic sadness. Strane and Vanessa have an equally painful and beautiful relationship, much like Humbert Humbert and Dolores Haze in Lolita, but the beauty is mostly in the fact that what they have is corrupt and essentially sinful. It's difficult to read through the many times Vanessa puts herself through or endures situations that inevitably will harm her mental well-being and even worse to realize that her whole life really has been defined by her dark romance. On some parts, I sympathize with Strane and can see where he tries to restrain himself, because As Vanessa also comes to realize, he is not a bad person. Contrastingly, though I don't blame her, I felt as if Vanessa was at times selfish, self-pitying, and equally insane as Strane (unpopular opinion, maybe). My reservations against her rest in the fact that she doesn't accept kindness and help around her, but instead opens her arms to pain and darkness in order to abuse herself further, even when she knows it's a mistake. As a helpless bystander (aka a reader), all I could do is watch Vanessa make decisions that I felt as if almost any other human being would have avoided and push away any form of healing that could have been taken to recover. Vanessa is not a character you can easily sympathize with, but it is a unique perspective that I really enjoyed reading from.

“...does it make any sense at all to know that it ends badly for all of us, even the happiest of us, and that we all lose everything that matters in the end -- and yet to know as well, despite all this, as cruelly as the game is stacked, that it's impossible to play it with a kind of joy?"