The Comeback and My Dark Vanessa share some serious and heartbreaking themes: the sexual abuse of minors and the devastating aftereffects upon the victims. Check out my reviews of The Comeback by Ella Berman and My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell and then my thoughts on the two of them compared!

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The Comeback by Ella Berman. Published on August 3, 2020 by Berkley. Thanks to the publisher for providing me with a review copy.

Synopsis: At the height of her career and on the eve of her first Golden Globe nomination, teen star Grace Turner disappeared. Now, tentatively sober and surprisingly numb, Grace is back in Los Angeles after her year of self-imposed exile. She knows the new private life she wants isn’t going to be easy as she tries to be a better person and reconnect with the people she left behind. But when Grace is asked to present a lifetime achievement award to director Able Yorke—the man who controlled her every move for eight years—she realizes that she can’t run from the secret behind her spectacular crash and burn for much longer.

Review of The Comeback by Ella Berman

The Comeback was the story of a successful young actress who is discovered by a famous director, then groomed and sexually assaulted by him, and finally discarded. After suffering all this in secret, Grace suffers a complete breakdown. The story begins after Grace has fled Hollywood. She’s spent a year hiding out with her parents in Anaheim. When she leaves their home to venture back into Hollywood, she’s discovered by the paparazzi. I know you’ve seen those stories on the front pages of supermarket tabloids – celebrities who have “gone wild” or “let themselves go.”

Grace is only twenty-four, but it feels like she’s lived a lifetime, from giving an award-winning performance in a movie about a teen prostitute to her retreat from the spotlight. She’s suffered substance abuse problems, abandoned her marriage, and lost touch with her agent and manager. She’s tried to raise the issue of the terrible things that happened to her at the hands of Able Yorke, the charismatic director who made her a star, but no one seems willing to listen.

The Comeback tackles many issues, from our culture’s obsession with women’s appearance, bodies, and sexuality to underage sexual abuse and sexual assault in Hollywood. The book doesn’t let anyone off the hook, from those who commit these crimes to those who are complicit in them, enable them, or just look away.

Grace is a memorable character I rooted for as she struggled to pick up the pieces of her life and start again. Though the book mainly takes place in the present, the narrative does delve into her past trauma as she struggles to come to terms with how that trauma has affected her mental health, self-esteem, and ability to trust and form relationships with others.

There were many other great secondary characters in this book, from Grace’s sarcastic assistant to her puzzled husband to her hilarious yet fragile younger sister.

Definitely recommend this one if you like books about a character fighting to get regain a sense of control after a terrible trauma.

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My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell. Published on March 10, 2020 by William Morrow. Thanks to the publisher for sending a finished copy; my review is based on a library copy.

Synopsis: 2000. Bright, ambitious, and yearning for adulthood, fifteen-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her forty-two-year-old English teacher. 2017. Amid the rising wave of allegations against powerful men, a reckoning is coming due. Strane has been accused of sexual abuse by a former student, who reaches out to Vanessa, and now Vanessa suddenly finds herself facing an impossible choice: remain silent, firm in the belief that her teenage self willingly engaged in this relationship, or redefine herself and the events of her past. But how can Vanessa reject her first love, the man who fundamentally transformed her and has been a persistent presence in her life? Is it possible that the man she loved as a teenager—and who professed to worship only her—may be far different from what she has always believed?

Review of My Dark Vanessa

I don’t typically read “romances” between teachers and their young students that normalize or romanticize something that I consider sexual abuse. But I did read My Dark Vanessa and I’m glad I did. Yes, it was deeply disturbing, but the author did several things in her writing that made this story worth reading for me.

First, the story wasn’t just told in the present, filled with longing glances and touches that go on a little too long. Those things were in the story, but this narrative also has Vanessa Wye looking back on her relationship with her English teacher, Mr. Strane, seventeen years later. (Just noticed that his name is just one letter away from “strange.”) We do get Vanessa’s recollection of the heady time in which her forty-ish English teacher takes an interest in her. She’s an insecure teenager and she’s flattered. But the detachment of having thirty-two year-old Vanessa in the story helps us see this “romance” for what it was: predatory grooming and sexual assault.

For me, the hardest parts of the story to read were, surprisingly, Vanessa in the present. Why? Because those parts drove home how this relationship affected Vanessa years later. How much power her abuser still had over her. How much he brainwashed her into thinking that they were equals in the relationship. How he manipulated her into believing that she wanted the abuse. That she asked for it.

Vanessa is still in contact with Mr. Strane, who is now nearly sixty and still hitting on students. Vane is still in complete denial about what happened to her. She’s jealous that he’s replaced her with another student. But when one of Strane’s new targets decides to publicly accuse him, Vanessa is forced to take a look at what happened to her from a new perspective.

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How do these books compare? To me, My Dark Vanessa was a much darker book. It was horrifying for me to watch the grooming process, see how much the abuse damaged Vanessa, and watch her get dragged right back into her abuser’s orbit. The Comeback was more hopeful, letting us see Grace at her lowest, but also showing her as she inched her way back to physical and mental health and began to reclaim her life.

Note: these books are both adult books – if you are looking for YA books on similar topics, here is my list of YA Books About Sexual Assault and Rape Culture.

Have you read either of these? Talk to me in comments!