tarheeltegan 's review for:

Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll

2.0

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I thought I would like this book a lot more than I did given the premise and reception. I found Ani to be a completely unsympathetic protagonist, which shocked me given what happened to her. I felt so, so bad for teenage Ani (never understood those girls who were willing to give everything up to be "popular") but had zero sympathy for adult Ani, who is-- to put it lightly-- an absolutely horrendous human being. She's materialistic, manipulative, and completely and totally fake. She detests other women, is obsessed with status, and is so aggressively unhappy with herself that she doesn't enjoy a single second of her life. She's so ashamed of her (totally normal, middle-class) upbringing that it made me embarrassed for her-- such low self-esteem! Overall the book felt SO one-dimensional to me. Every single woman was a bottle-blonde, anorexic/exercise-addicted airhead, and every man was a "finance-bro" cokehead who was easily manipulable and casually cruel. This book made me feel awful about humanity after reading it, which is something I try to avoid (especially these days!)