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3.41 AVERAGE
3.41 AVERAGE
“There is something about seeing someone from behind, something about the way people walk away, that I’ve always found unnervingly intimate. Maybe it’s because the back of the body isn’t on guard the way the front is – the slouch of the shoulders and the flex in the back muscles, that’s the most honest you’ll ever see a person.”
Ani FaNelli has it all, and that isn’t an exaggeration. An editor at The Women’s Magazine, Ani wears the perfect clothes, follows the latest celebrity diets, and sports a distinct diamond ring on her perfectly manicured finger. Too bad it’s all a lie.
Meet TifAni FaNelli, originally from the wrong side of the Main Line in Pennsylvania. As a freshman in high school, she was sent to the prestigious, co-ed Bradley School. For TifAni, high school was less about make up, shoes, and boys, and more about surviving. Ani has been running from her past for years, but with the anniversary of her horrific past on the horizon, a dark secret threatens to unravel her perfect future.
Jessica Knoll’s debut novel reads like the work of a veteran writer. If you think this book is typical chick lit, you are dead wrong. Ani’s twisted point of view sustains a dark humor throughout the book, and her secret will keep you guessing until the very end.
“By the end of it all I just assumed no one ever told the truth, and that was when I started lying too.”
Ani FaNelli has it all, and that isn’t an exaggeration. An editor at The Women’s Magazine, Ani wears the perfect clothes, follows the latest celebrity diets, and sports a distinct diamond ring on her perfectly manicured finger. Too bad it’s all a lie.
Meet TifAni FaNelli, originally from the wrong side of the Main Line in Pennsylvania. As a freshman in high school, she was sent to the prestigious, co-ed Bradley School. For TifAni, high school was less about make up, shoes, and boys, and more about surviving. Ani has been running from her past for years, but with the anniversary of her horrific past on the horizon, a dark secret threatens to unravel her perfect future.
Jessica Knoll’s debut novel reads like the work of a veteran writer. If you think this book is typical chick lit, you are dead wrong. Ani’s twisted point of view sustains a dark humor throughout the book, and her secret will keep you guessing until the very end.
“By the end of it all I just assumed no one ever told the truth, and that was when I started lying too.”
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
2.5
As soon as I saw they compared it to Gone Girl, I should have put it back on the shelf!!!
Up until the "incident" was a decent read. Poor writing in my mind, and I lacked any kind of connection to the characters.
As soon as I saw they compared it to Gone Girl, I should have put it back on the shelf!!!
Up until the "incident" was a decent read. Poor writing in my mind, and I lacked any kind of connection to the characters.
This book was recommended to me with the sales pitch "If you liked Gone Girl, you'll love this." And I will say that while the books have similarities in the sense that they're both dark and violent and have somewhat unlikeable narrators, they're very different books.
Ani isn't all that likeable but you also completely understand why. She's sympathetic. You think the book is going to travel along talking about one major event in her life and how it impacted her but then you learn about another major event and that's where it gets really interesting.
Ani isn't all that likeable but you also completely understand why. She's sympathetic. You think the book is going to travel along talking about one major event in her life and how it impacted her but then you learn about another major event and that's where it gets really interesting.
'Luckiest Girl Alive' by Jessica Knoll was an interesting read. As someone who loves young adult novels (even though this wasn't one), I enjoyed the mix of main character Ani's present-day, mid-twenties life coupled with flashbacks that led to an understanding of who she is as a person now based on her scandal-riddled past.
TifAni FaNelli is what every 'Sex and the City'-loving viewer wishes they could be – successful, attractive, and poised to marry a wealthy, good-looking, well-bred guy. With Manhattan as her home, the world seems to be her oyster. Yet the past haunts her, and it all is coming back pretty strongly through a documentary being filmed about her old high school and all the goings-on that made her past so unbearable, yet made her so motivated to propel herself toward a better and brighter future.
The young adult scenes, when Ani (what she goes by in the present day) is a mere fourteen years old, struggling with her identity and how to best fit in at a new school, is truly eye-opening. She makes friends, garners enemies, and finds that sometimes the two can get mismatched. Figuring out how to best differentiate between the two becomes harder and harder as more and more issues begin to occur.
Being in the popular crowd tends to take a toll on even the most confident. Since Ani sometimes even called herself out on being too eager to please the in-crowd, she sets herself up for situations that breed trouble. However, she is certainly the victim, despite the way her mother and some others make her feel guilty for giving in to peer pressure as it relates to drinking and boys, a combination that doesn't serve to propel her to further popularity when one night as the new girl goes terribly wrong. Her life begins to spiral out of control, and the one friend (Arthur) she had made before trying out the popular crowd is more like a “frenemy” at this point. Her talks with Arthur lead to more trouble, when a terrible tragedy rears its ugly head at her elite school.
Ani's past and present are intertwined through the switching off of the chapters from past to present and vice versa. The narrative, in my opinion, became more compelling as the story progresses, and by the halfway point, I was anxious to read more and the pages went much quicker than earlier on in the novel. Some of the secondary characters in Ani's young adult life as well as her adult life seemed unimportant to me, and I sometimes had a hard time keeping track of exactly who they were and why they were relevant to her story, but at the same time, they didn't take away from the main plot. Her relationship with her fiance, Luke, in the present day, had its ups and downs, as she questioned her relationship with him, despite feeling he was the “best” thing for her.
'Luckiest Girl Alive' was a provocative and telling read about how the past can creep up on you even when you think it's “out of sight, out of mind.” I recommend this novel to those who want to read a realistic tale of seeming inadequacy, the struggle to fit in, and reinvention when it seems all but possible.
Beth Rodgers, Author of 'Freshman Fourteen,' A Young Adult Novel
TifAni FaNelli is what every 'Sex and the City'-loving viewer wishes they could be – successful, attractive, and poised to marry a wealthy, good-looking, well-bred guy. With Manhattan as her home, the world seems to be her oyster. Yet the past haunts her, and it all is coming back pretty strongly through a documentary being filmed about her old high school and all the goings-on that made her past so unbearable, yet made her so motivated to propel herself toward a better and brighter future.
The young adult scenes, when Ani (what she goes by in the present day) is a mere fourteen years old, struggling with her identity and how to best fit in at a new school, is truly eye-opening. She makes friends, garners enemies, and finds that sometimes the two can get mismatched. Figuring out how to best differentiate between the two becomes harder and harder as more and more issues begin to occur.
Being in the popular crowd tends to take a toll on even the most confident. Since Ani sometimes even called herself out on being too eager to please the in-crowd, she sets herself up for situations that breed trouble. However, she is certainly the victim, despite the way her mother and some others make her feel guilty for giving in to peer pressure as it relates to drinking and boys, a combination that doesn't serve to propel her to further popularity when one night as the new girl goes terribly wrong. Her life begins to spiral out of control, and the one friend (Arthur) she had made before trying out the popular crowd is more like a “frenemy” at this point. Her talks with Arthur lead to more trouble, when a terrible tragedy rears its ugly head at her elite school.
Ani's past and present are intertwined through the switching off of the chapters from past to present and vice versa. The narrative, in my opinion, became more compelling as the story progresses, and by the halfway point, I was anxious to read more and the pages went much quicker than earlier on in the novel. Some of the secondary characters in Ani's young adult life as well as her adult life seemed unimportant to me, and I sometimes had a hard time keeping track of exactly who they were and why they were relevant to her story, but at the same time, they didn't take away from the main plot. Her relationship with her fiance, Luke, in the present day, had its ups and downs, as she questioned her relationship with him, despite feeling he was the “best” thing for her.
'Luckiest Girl Alive' was a provocative and telling read about how the past can creep up on you even when you think it's “out of sight, out of mind.” I recommend this novel to those who want to read a realistic tale of seeming inadequacy, the struggle to fit in, and reinvention when it seems all but possible.
Beth Rodgers, Author of 'Freshman Fourteen,' A Young Adult Novel
It was good but not great. I did find myself really drawn into the last half and I usually rate books highly that are quick moving and surprising. I think the main character's personality (the shallow fashion fixation and judgy-ness and obsessive dieting) just grated on me too much.
It's a 3, maybe should be a 3.5 but I'm feeling stingy.
It's a 3, maybe should be a 3.5 but I'm feeling stingy.
I DNF'd this book. Honestly I could not get into the main character and her personality. Maybe this book is for someone else, but it isn't for me.
A great story with unpredictable twists and turns. Definitely entertaining and worth a read.
I'm on the fence about this one. I couldn't stop reading it because I was sucked in by the train wreck of a main character and wondering what her secret was. It caught me off guard and made me feel sick. But sometimes that's what authors are supposed to do: make you have a visceral reaction to the story.