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bookishthoughtsandspots 's review for:
Luckiest Girl Alive
by Jessica Knoll
In a nutshell: Ani is about to achieve everything she has always wanted… an ever-changing career as a journalist in New York, a perfect body, and a husband with a lot of money to support her shopping habits. But trauma from high school that continues to haunt her proves that her self-perceived form of happiness may not be all that it seems.
Recommendation: If you’re one of those looking for the next Gone Girl, read Before I Go To Sleep or Girl on the Train instead, because literally, this is the next Gone Girl with an unoriginal story line and a carbon-copied main character.
This book is without a doubt a wannabe of a Gillian Flynn novel. Or I should say… the author is a wannabe of Gillian Flynn because there are so many similarities between this and Gone Girl it’s ridiculous. The fact that I consider this book to be unoriginal right down to the way the main character thinks and acts should give the book 0.5 stars. But, I decided to be generous because it did want to make me keep reading because I was all “WHAT TRAUMATIZED THIS CHARACTER SO MUCH TO MAKE HER SUCH A HORRIBLE PERSON?” Warning: this review will probably contain spoilers so that I can protect people from reading this trash.
“You know these people, just so fucking happy to be alive, bouncing down the street, buds in their ears and faces repulsive with pleasure as they belt out the lyrics to some noxious Motown classic. I’ve gotten bold, bumping them with my enormous bag as I pass by, savoring their outraged ‘Hey!’ behind me. No one gets to be that happy."
Working as a sex columnist for a well-known women’s magazine and with a fashion sense and wardrobe she uses to impress others, Ani Fanelli puts on the illusion of being happy, when in reality she is bitter and self-conscious. She dresses and maintains her body image through an eating disorder only to impress others yet seems not to care what others think as she dislikes most people. Ani’s issues stem from when she endured public humiliation and severe trauma at Bradley high school, which at the time was a highly accredited institution. She is ready to leave her pain and weakness behind her by participating in a documentary and with a marriage to a successful businessman. Through the process, however, she learns that it is not easy to escape from the past.
It seems like an interesting book on the surface, doesn’t it? The problem: Ani is EXACTLY like Amy from Gone Girl, which is coincidentally why I didn’t really enjoy Gone Girl. She is a very “fake” character, in that she puts on a show for everyone else, even her fiance. In fact, it’s like she doesn’t even love her fiance or respect him as a person at all. She just likes the fact that he has a lot of money to support her shopping, is very attractive, and will fulfill her kinky sexual fantasies. Ani takes pride in looking better than others and is highly superficial. She thinks she deserves happiness more than anyone else because of what she went through in the past, which in all honesty… she kind of brought upon herself, at least the first part.
There is also nothing TO Ani’s relationship with Luke. They kind of just roll off each other. Do they even like each other? They don’t really talk much… just flit from social outing to social outing. In fact, there is almost nothing to Ani’s relationship with anyone, aside from her best friend Nell I guess.Because she acts like a totally different, “flip-floppy” person when she is in social situations with different people.
SPOILER ALERT HERE: The public humiliation she endured was being raped while under the influence by three of her guy friends at a “party”(meaning only the four of them), which she went to by herself, knowing full well she would be the only girl there, with all the intention of the being the center of attention and doing whatever it took to be “popular.” And then when the popular kids didn’t seem to like her she’d hang out with the underdogs she had first befriended when she started at Bradley. But then the popular kids would pay attention to her again and she’d eat it all up and get herself right back into bad situations. So as horrible as it sounds, I didn’t feel bad for her for any of that because she was a complete idiot. And honestly, if you read the book, I don’t think you’d feel sorry for her either because she is very “fake” throughout her teenage and dult years. She is aware of exactly what she is doing and takes pleasure in doing so. So when she puts on her sob story about that, no, I don’t feel bad at all.
MORE SPOILERS, EEP!: The other trauma she experienced at Bradley was essentially a “Columbine’ situation, carried out by one of the underdogs that was basically her pretend best friend when she wanted him around and then would turn away when the popular kids wanted to hang out with her. And while yes that is awful, I would never wish a situation like that upon anyone, it just made me really hate the book and lose respect for the author. I was already mad at Knol for ripping off Gone Girl by creating a very “Amy” character that is fabricated and fake in every way to the point where it even seems as if SHE doesn’t know who she is and flip-flops between personality types. By the end of the book, she has NOT developed as a character. There is no character development, just a character given multiple personality traits on all spectrums and by the end, she falls into none of those spectrums so readers are left wondering “how does she REALLY feel?” But then, Knoll had to throw a high school shoot out that SCREAMS Columbine in there just to make it more interesting.
There are also just a lot of pointless things in the book that are never resolved. Like why does Ani have an eating disorder? I mean, she obviously has one, but it’s an odd one because she binge-eats but doesn’t throw up like someone with bulimia would do and then she’ll think things like “This glass of wine will be my dinner” and will essentially starve herself. The way her disorder is written, you also don’t feel sorry for her for having an eating disorder because she is self-righteous about it and is a really bad and fake person anyway, so you’re left wondering why she has one. and WHAT is with her weird sex thing? Why would Knoll even bother to write about Ani’s fetish for being seriously physically hurt by Luke during sex and then not explain anything behind it? It literally just doesn’t make sense because she writes about is so much. I mean, if she merely mentioned it once I’d be fine with it. But she spends a lot of time writing about it without any rhyme or reason. Actually… Knoll IS a Cosmopolitan writer so maybe that’s why? It probably also explains why Ani is a sex columnist… but whatever.
Recommendation: If you’re one of those looking for the next Gone Girl, read Before I Go To Sleep or Girl on the Train instead, because literally, this is the next Gone Girl with an unoriginal story line and a carbon-copied main character.
This book is without a doubt a wannabe of a Gillian Flynn novel. Or I should say… the author is a wannabe of Gillian Flynn because there are so many similarities between this and Gone Girl it’s ridiculous. The fact that I consider this book to be unoriginal right down to the way the main character thinks and acts should give the book 0.5 stars. But, I decided to be generous because it did want to make me keep reading because I was all “WHAT TRAUMATIZED THIS CHARACTER SO MUCH TO MAKE HER SUCH A HORRIBLE PERSON?” Warning: this review will probably contain spoilers so that I can protect people from reading this trash.
“You know these people, just so fucking happy to be alive, bouncing down the street, buds in their ears and faces repulsive with pleasure as they belt out the lyrics to some noxious Motown classic. I’ve gotten bold, bumping them with my enormous bag as I pass by, savoring their outraged ‘Hey!’ behind me. No one gets to be that happy."
Working as a sex columnist for a well-known women’s magazine and with a fashion sense and wardrobe she uses to impress others, Ani Fanelli puts on the illusion of being happy, when in reality she is bitter and self-conscious. She dresses and maintains her body image through an eating disorder only to impress others yet seems not to care what others think as she dislikes most people. Ani’s issues stem from when she endured public humiliation and severe trauma at Bradley high school, which at the time was a highly accredited institution. She is ready to leave her pain and weakness behind her by participating in a documentary and with a marriage to a successful businessman. Through the process, however, she learns that it is not easy to escape from the past.
It seems like an interesting book on the surface, doesn’t it? The problem: Ani is EXACTLY like Amy from Gone Girl, which is coincidentally why I didn’t really enjoy Gone Girl. She is a very “fake” character, in that she puts on a show for everyone else, even her fiance. In fact, it’s like she doesn’t even love her fiance or respect him as a person at all. She just likes the fact that he has a lot of money to support her shopping, is very attractive, and will fulfill her kinky sexual fantasies. Ani takes pride in looking better than others and is highly superficial. She thinks she deserves happiness more than anyone else because of what she went through in the past, which in all honesty… she kind of brought upon herself, at least the first part.
There is also nothing TO Ani’s relationship with Luke. They kind of just roll off each other. Do they even like each other? They don’t really talk much… just flit from social outing to social outing. In fact, there is almost nothing to Ani’s relationship with anyone, aside from her best friend Nell I guess.Because she acts like a totally different, “flip-floppy” person when she is in social situations with different people.
SPOILER ALERT HERE: The public humiliation she endured was being raped while under the influence by three of her guy friends at a “party”(meaning only the four of them), which she went to by herself, knowing full well she would be the only girl there, with all the intention of the being the center of attention and doing whatever it took to be “popular.” And then when the popular kids didn’t seem to like her she’d hang out with the underdogs she had first befriended when she started at Bradley. But then the popular kids would pay attention to her again and she’d eat it all up and get herself right back into bad situations. So as horrible as it sounds, I didn’t feel bad for her for any of that because she was a complete idiot. And honestly, if you read the book, I don’t think you’d feel sorry for her either because she is very “fake” throughout her teenage and dult years. She is aware of exactly what she is doing and takes pleasure in doing so. So when she puts on her sob story about that, no, I don’t feel bad at all.
MORE SPOILERS, EEP!: The other trauma she experienced at Bradley was essentially a “Columbine’ situation, carried out by one of the underdogs that was basically her pretend best friend when she wanted him around and then would turn away when the popular kids wanted to hang out with her. And while yes that is awful, I would never wish a situation like that upon anyone, it just made me really hate the book and lose respect for the author. I was already mad at Knol for ripping off Gone Girl by creating a very “Amy” character that is fabricated and fake in every way to the point where it even seems as if SHE doesn’t know who she is and flip-flops between personality types. By the end of the book, she has NOT developed as a character. There is no character development, just a character given multiple personality traits on all spectrums and by the end, she falls into none of those spectrums so readers are left wondering “how does she REALLY feel?” But then, Knoll had to throw a high school shoot out that SCREAMS Columbine in there just to make it more interesting.
There are also just a lot of pointless things in the book that are never resolved. Like why does Ani have an eating disorder? I mean, she obviously has one, but it’s an odd one because she binge-eats but doesn’t throw up like someone with bulimia would do and then she’ll think things like “This glass of wine will be my dinner” and will essentially starve herself. The way her disorder is written, you also don’t feel sorry for her for having an eating disorder because she is self-righteous about it and is a really bad and fake person anyway, so you’re left wondering why she has one. and WHAT is with her weird sex thing? Why would Knoll even bother to write about Ani’s fetish for being seriously physically hurt by Luke during sex and then not explain anything behind it? It literally just doesn’t make sense because she writes about is so much. I mean, if she merely mentioned it once I’d be fine with it. But she spends a lot of time writing about it without any rhyme or reason. Actually… Knoll IS a Cosmopolitan writer so maybe that’s why? It probably also explains why Ani is a sex columnist… but whatever.