Luckiest Girl Alive

Ani is initially very hard to like. She's brittle, mean, a snob, and social climbing. She never becomes completely likable, but who is? We need to stop demanding that. Over the course of the novel, we read about some of how she became this brittle woman. The ways she was hurt, let down, traumatized, betrayed, misunderstood, and abandoned molded much of who she became, and made her story compelling. We're still letting down girls and women in many of the same ways.

When I mentioned in a book group I was reading it, someone pretty much responded “That second half!” The second half is the fulfillment of the slow burn first half, it's true.

After the novel, the author included an essay on what she has in common with Ani. If this is in your copy, please read it! In it, she writes: I know that I made the mistake of thinking that living well is the best revenge. That I figured out, eventually, that the appearance of living well is not the same thing as actually living well.

I think a lot of people make the same mistake, and this is what makes Ani (and the author) so relatable – the way she strive in the wrong ways to heal festering wounds. Ani sometimes drinks a lot of water, and is fixated in food, because she starves and thirsts to get her basic needs met. She thinks if she acquires enough outward success that she can show the people who've harmed her, can show herself, that she is worthy – and even more importantly, that she is safe.

While I really kinda hated the New York engagement modern day stuff, I loved the material with young TiFani, and that made the book worth reading. (That name, though?)