Luckiest Girl Alive: A Novel Paperback – April 5, 2016

This book had been flying under my radar until I received my June 19 copy of The Week magazine. This great weekly has 2 full pages of book reviews each issue. My go to pages as soon as it arrives. In this issue, I was thrilled to find 5 featured books for Summer fiction: Secrets, scandals, and other fine diversions. Jessica Knoll, the author, is a former Cosmopolitan staffer and this book is her debut novel. Quite a feat! "This is the book you are going to insist all your friends read this summer,"said Carol E Barrowman of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "The author tricks us into breathlessly turning pages while she is constructing a clever, cunning satire of 21st-century womanhood." But this is my review!TifAni (who then becomes Ani) enters our world as a 14 year old attending a new school and struggling for recognition from the "in crowd" which she never experienced in her old school.As Ani, she does not have that struggle as she has bagged a beautiful, wealthy man who has given her his mother's huge ring to symbolize their engagement. All she has to do in her grown up world is wave that ring around and even people who don't know him, know that she has arrived.Back to TifAni, and we find her actually getting her wish and attracting all the right classmates midst a few blunders and set backs. We move back and forth between the two throughout the book, and the writing is crisp, engaging and evocative of the settings portrayed.Because she is naive, and unable to recognize danger when it confronts her she makes a mistake that leads us into a harrowing situation involving alcohol and a pretty brutal date rape. I sympathized with her easily because the author is adept at character development and, although she hides things at times for the story she tells, the author is able to pull us along and find agreement with events as they occur.A teacher who befriends TifAni plays a large role in the novel and assists our protagonist to remain as centered and wise as she can be with the events she endures.When we understand that Ani has been included in the filming of a documentary about her school years, we receive much more information, almost too much to bear.I would encourage anyone to purchase and read this book, and if it sounds too much like " chic lit " it really isn't at all. This is a fast paced book that keeps you interested and guessing, and above all else, it is a book of our times!

I picked up this book because of a recommendation and decided to try it. I was surprised by how unsure I am about how I feel about this book even months later, but I've read it three times now and still don't have a clear understanding of how I feel.The character, Ani is probably the main reason for why I feel so unsettled by the novel. Ani was the victim of a gang rape in high school and then later a victim in the school shooting where she was falsely accused of being involved since her rapists were either killed or seriously harmed. When written like that I should immediately feel sympathy for Ani but it isn't that simple. Ani is presented as a manipulative woman who pulls the strings all around her, she manipulated her fiancé to propose, tries to seduce her married former teacher and is entirely focused on presenting the best image to the work. She's entirely shallow in that respect and selfish so when I meet her its hard for me to like her let alone identify with her.However all of these horrible things happened to her and I found myself wondering about what caused her to be that way. It makes sense that she would be focused on her image because she wants to prove to the world she is not a victim, that she was not an accomplice to the shooting, that she isn't defined by the tragedies in her life.So while I don't feel as much sympathy for her I actually recognized that this might be one of the more honest portrayals of a victim. Because so many times in fiction victims are portrayed as entirely sympathetic, entirely without fault or flaw and inherently tragic. Ani is none of those things which in some ways makes her stronger. Its so strange but while I admit I did not like the character very much, I also couldn't help but admire her and was still rooting for her to get her justice in the end.Even now I still don't entirely know if this is a very good book or a bad one since I don't particularly like the main character but at the same time, the fact is this book has stayed with me. I still think about it and dissect it and reread passages from it. I suppose that is the mark of a good book, the fact that it did leave such a profound impression on me.