Take a photo of a barcode or cover
asusini 's review for:
Luckiest Girl Alive
by Jessica Knoll
I think a lot of people negatively rate this book because TifAni is not a particularly likeable character. But I found her captivating, and I think to get stuck on her likeability completely misses the point.
The way her character is written, her sharp angry edges that sometimes poke out and chafe against the edges of her perfectly curated life, just feels so accurate for some people. There are so many things to be angry about in this day and age and for various reasons: our partners, our families, our work, etc. we just shove it down into ourselves. I think a lot of readers didn’t like Ani, but that is the point. There are days where we don’t like ourselves, where we are manipulative and cruel, because we are angry. And as anyone who works in a competitive industry in NYC in their early 20s will tell you, a lot of times you do have to calculate, read the room, and adjust yourself accordingly.
In a world where Ani is constantly looking over her shoulder waiting for the past to catch up, of course she exercises meticulous control — over her look, her eating, her body, her life. The depiction of her teenage years was so on the nose of an adolescence experience that it threw me all the way back to my own high school years. The blistering insecurities we would do anything to get past. TifAni is a character alive before societal acceptance has shifted, where being a woman who supports women, a “girl’s girl” is what is acceptable now. But in the early 2000s when she would have been in high school, it was the opposite. Women were pitted against each other, so of course her character has grown up with that.
The fact that Jessica Knoll wrote parts of this based on her own experience is even more striking. I’m glad she has put this work out into the world, and I look forward to reading her other works.
The way her character is written, her sharp angry edges that sometimes poke out and chafe against the edges of her perfectly curated life, just feels so accurate for some people. There are so many things to be angry about in this day and age and for various reasons: our partners, our families, our work, etc. we just shove it down into ourselves. I think a lot of readers didn’t like Ani, but that is the point. There are days where we don’t like ourselves, where we are manipulative and cruel, because we are angry. And as anyone who works in a competitive industry in NYC in their early 20s will tell you, a lot of times you do have to calculate, read the room, and adjust yourself accordingly.
In a world where Ani is constantly looking over her shoulder waiting for the past to catch up, of course she exercises meticulous control — over her look, her eating, her body, her life. The depiction of her teenage years was so on the nose of an adolescence experience that it threw me all the way back to my own high school years. The blistering insecurities we would do anything to get past. TifAni is a character alive before societal acceptance has shifted, where being a woman who supports women, a “girl’s girl” is what is acceptable now. But in the early 2000s when she would have been in high school, it was the opposite. Women were pitted against each other, so of course her character has grown up with that.
The fact that Jessica Knoll wrote parts of this based on her own experience is even more striking. I’m glad she has put this work out into the world, and I look forward to reading her other works.