By Ella Berman
This book is about a child actor who grows up to have some mental instability. An A-List director “discovers” her at the age of fourteen and together they achieve fame, credibility, and wealth. Unfortunately, he takes molests her, gaslights her, and then leaves her in the wind once she ages out of his lust. Broken, self-medicating, and lacking all self-confidence, she vanishes from Hollywood never to be seen again…for a year.
Grace Turner retreats to her parents’ home in Anaheim – far from the edges of existence that are portrayed in the tabloids after her disappearance from the lime light. As she tries to cope in obscurity, she commits the unforgiveable sins of gaining ten pounds, letting her roots grow out, and only donning sweat pants. When her sister returns home from boarding school, suspended due to some clandestine indiscretion, Grace realizes she can no longer hide in Anaheim.
Facing her demons, she returns to her Venice beachfront home and the husband she has had no communication with in a year. As the paparazzi document her return, more vestiges of her former life return to her: a sober companion that can get the best drugs, an agent and manager that expect her forgiveness for leaving them high and dry, and surprisingly the wife of her abuser. Emilia York, wife of secret pedophile and Hollywood director Able York, tries to help Grace out of guilt for all the years she did nothing while promising Grace’s parents she would take care of her.
Grace begins to come into her own and starts a plan to no longer be the victim. She will make Able feel uncomfortable in his own skin. She will turn all the people Able loves into his worst enemies, as he did to her. She will take back her power and he will pay.
This book is everything I wanted My Dark Vanessa to be! The reader is outraged while getting glimpses into a shattered psyche. But the reader revels in the heroine taking back her voice, her platform, and her power. Grace makes many mistakes along the way, as humans do, and there is no perfect ending, but we are left believing she is finally on the right path. And that Able York will be justly burned at the stake.
Soundtrack
- Wrong Way by Sublime
- The Kids Aren’t Alright by Offspring
- I’m Not Okay (I Promise) by My Chemical Romance
- Spiderwebs by No Doubt
- Stupid Girl by Garbage
Pros & Cons & Potential Spoilers
Pros
- Revenge tastes sweet careening over a cliff in Santa Monica
- The relationships that Grace is able to eventually salvage – some good people in a sea of scum
- Revenge also tastes sweet on the stage of a nationally-televised awards show
Cons
- Other women enabling abusers of women
- Jealousy that can come from mother/daughter relationships turning toxic when unacknowledged
- Systemic exploitation of women in Hollywood