Review: Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll

Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll

Published: May 12, 2015

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Format: NetGalley

Challenge: 2015 NG/ED

Rating: 5/5

Synopsis

HER PERFECT LIFE IS A PERFECT LIE.

As a teenager at the prestigious Bradley School, Ani FaNelli endured a shocking, public humiliation that left her desperate to reinvent herself. Now, with a glamorous job, expensive wardrobe, and handsome blue blood fiancé, she’s this close to living the perfect life she’s worked so hard to achieve. But Ani has a secret. There’s something else buried in her past that still haunts her, something private and painful that threatens to bubble to the surface and destroy everything.

With a singular voice and twists you won’t see coming, Luckiest Girl Alive explores the unbearable pressure that so many women feel to “have it all” and introduces a heroine whose sharp edges and cutthroat ambition have been protecting a scandalous truth, and a heart that's bigger than it first appears. The question remains: will breaking her silence destroy all that she has worked for—or, will it at long last, set Ani free?

My Thoughts

Wow this book is like nothing I had read before. When we first met Ani she is a girl who wants the perfect life. She works at a high class magazine, she has the perfect fiancé and is living the perfect New York life that people could only dream of. Then slowing peeling back the layers we see her dark thoughts and we realize that Ani isn’t Ani at all. She is TifAni and we learn the story that brought us Ani.

As I was reading this I was just thinking this is just a girl who needs to be brought back to reality. Then I thought she’s simply a sick and twisted person who likes to degrade people for her simple amusement but then we learn everything that happened to her. And my opinion was changed in an instant. The things that happened to her I couldn’t believe. How could anyone gone through what she has and not change? She has taken on this persona to simply hide her pain in a sense wearing a costume so that she would never be that person she was…ever again. She thought that by “playing” this part she could reinvent herself and basically change her past but as we all know the past will always come back to haunt you. Only when she reveals her secrets and those involved are accountable for what they did will she be truly free.

This is the most original, twisted and freshest story telling I’ve read in a LONG time. While some might be taken aback by the realest of her writing, Knoll is very blunt sometimes but that's what makes it so amazing. Somethings just have to be told straight up and never sugar coated. Although some of the subject matters might be strong and shocking they must be told so that we are able to know why Ani has become the person she is today. Beneath it all Ani is just that young girl who has always wanted to be accepted, all while slowing losing the person she truly is. She is definitely one of my favorite characters in lit this year. She is strong yet broken. You hate and love her. She is victim yet a survivor. So I thank you Jessica Knoll for giving us this character who is so complex that we will never know who she truly is and that’s what makes her the perfectly flawed character that I yearn to find in books and who makes reading that much more enjoyable.