Luckiest Girl Alive Book Review

 

Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll  

Mostly Spoiler-free Review

Release Date: May 12, 2015

 Genre: Thriller

 

Age Range: Adult

Goodreads Avg. Rating: 3.54 stars 

I went into this book completely blind. It had been recommended to me and I don't know if I ever read the description. I would not advise this course of action. Please make sure you check the content warnings as there are several touchy subjects covered. That being said I really enjoyed it.

We follow TifAni FaNelli, who goes by only Ani (Ah-nee) now. She is 27 and an editor for the Women's Magazine in New York. Ani was a very difficult person to like at the beginning. Well really for most of the book if you wanted to like her. It took me several chapters to warm up to what was going on in her head. What she is thinking is very at odds with how she acts. She is trying so very hard to present an image, for various reasons. Once you begin to understand why she wears this mask so much though things fall into place.

The book follows Ani as she is planning the last few weeks before her wedding. She is still getting stationary, the cakes, and other various things done before the big day. These things are being held off on because the idea of reaching her goal marriage actually terrifies Ani. To compensate the nerves she focuses so much more on losing weight, almost to the point of starving herself. There is another large event about to happen but you do not find out about that right away.

We see Ani at two major points of her life. In the first chapter is present Ani, but then we jump back to her freshman year of high school. At this point, she is just starting at a new prep school on the richer side of town. This is the beginning of TifAni learning to cultivate what others see of her. Through the chapters, we slowly unravel what happened in high school. While the secondary event was a true shock it is sad to say there was a good guess as to what the first might have been. These major events turned Tifani into Ani. Unfortunately, the fallout afterward shaped her just as much.

It is hard to say much about how the story resolved itself because in some ways it didn’t. I was not expecting some of the turns this book took. The most important thing that could happen though was TiffAni finally being able to see that she shouldn't be wearing the mask all the time. She was able to admit that she deserved someone who would love her with her broken pieces. Which really is all any of us should be looking for. I'm happy with the progress we got to see in her life but hope for so much more.

It took me a few chapters it really get into. Ani was a very rude character at the beginning but seeing her past self did help some. When I was able to get the audiobook as well it really put me more in her head space. Though with the time jumps the audio was not as good an indicator as to where we were at first.
This book handled serious topics with a lot of finesse. It is clear the author put a lot of research into the matter. There is so much to how we handle trauma that is different from person to person. This look at someone trying to figure out how to be an okay person was rough but no less accurate for that. I also highly recommend reading the updated author's notes at the end.

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