Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll

Release Date: May 12, 2015

Rating: 3/5

Told through the unreliable narrator of Ani, Luckiest Girl Alive is a dark and twisted story. Ani FaNelli is a New Yorker who has a seemingly perfect life: the perfect body, the perfect fiance, the perfect job. But the more you read, the more you realize that Ani’s life is anything but perfect.

Back in high school, Ani was TifAni the girl from the wrong side of the tracks. In her quest to be popular, TifAni endures things most of us would consider nightmares. In one particularly startling scene, TifAni attends a boozy party with some boys from school. When she wakes up the next morning, half-nude, the events of the previous night are crystal clear.

Just when you think that the “awful thing” in Ani’s past has been revealed, Knoll throws us a curveball. I don’t want to spoil anything but the situation is all too common.

And perhaps that is why this book strikes such a cord: the events are all too plausible. Tragedy happens and breaks all of us in different ways. Seeing a character who is simultaneously strong and strikingly vulnerable is heartbreaking but necessary.

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