Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2015
My Source: Louisville Free Public Library
This is the first novel by author, Jessica Knoll, who
recently revealed how her personal tragedy inspired her to write this book. It has
been on my Goodreads "to-read”
list since December 2015, so I was pleased to learn that one of my book club
members chose it as our April book (thanks Dorothy). This book has been praised
as a bestseller of the same caliber as Gone Girl and The Girl on the
Train. Since I loved the suspense and twists and turns of both of those
books, I was excited to read Luckiest Girl Alive. While I was hooked
from the beginning and at times couldn’t put it down, I believe the comparison
with the other two books is too generous. If I had not been aware of those
comparisons, I think I would have enjoyed this book more.
This novel is about Ani (pronounced Ah-nee), a twenty-eight
year-old woman living in Manhattan with her old money soon-to-be husband, Luke.
Ani is proud of her job at a women’s magazine, even though she writes the sex
column and aspires for more. She is also proud that she landed herself a
wealthy and established man. Ani is a slave to fashion and enjoys the fact that
Luke’s wealth allows her to buy the most sought after brand name clothes,
purses, and shoes. She enjoys it when people envy what appears to be her
privileged life and bright future. Ani has come a long way from her modest roots
in Pennsylvania just outside the prestigious Main Line. Her mother likes to
remind her of this and how easy it could be to slip back.
Ani gets her preoccupation with appearances, social status
and wealth from her mother. Prior to the mother enrolling her at the
prestigious Bradley School, Ani attended a Catholic elementary school in an
ordinary middles class suburb. To her mother, the transfer to the Bradley
School offers Ani the opportunity to socialize with the affluent people she
herself strives to be like. Ani is willing to commute by train to and from
school because she buys in to her mother’s claims of a better life. The author
did a great job of making me both hate and pity Ani’s mother, whom is a shallow
and unlikeable character without the capacity to feel empathy.
From page one the author insinuates that everything is not
as it seems. On the surface, the main characters appear to have the perfect
life, but the reader soon finds out that Ani is acting because she can’t
understand what others, especially Luke, could see in her true self.
Rusted and bacteria ridden, I’m the
blade that nicks at the perfectly hemmed seams of Luke’s star quarterback life,
threatening to shred it apart. And he likes that threat, the possibility of my
danger. But he doesn’t really want to see what I can do, the ragged holes I can
open. I’ve spent most of our relationship scratching the surface, experimenting
with the pressure, how much is too much before I draw blood? I’m getting tired.
Without giving away any spoilers, there are several different
points in the story where the reader could argue that Ani is the “luckiest girl
alive.” While most of the chapters focus on Ani’s present in which she is
planning her expensive Nantucket wedding, some of the chapters jump back to her
past as a 14 year-old adolescent trying to fit in as the new girl at an
exclusive private high school. This format gives the reader clues about the
secret she is hiding before it is actually revealed. At times I found the
chapters that do reveal the secret incredibly uncomfortable to read as I
imagined myself in Ani’s shoes. I was hoping all the way through for a twisted triumphant
revenge plot conclusion like in Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train
(does this make a me a bad person?), but was left wanting when the ending was
not as grand as I expected it to be based on the excruciating secret and the
amount of built up tension. While the ending is clear and revealed through
conversations between Ani and other characters, I would have preferred to see
the ending actually played out.
While I really enjoyed this book because of the suspense and
the vivid characters, I did not love it for the reasons mentioned above.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
