Luckiest Girl Alive: A Novel

by Jessica Knoll

Madeleine Maby (Narrator)

Soon to be a major Netflix film starring Mila Kunis!

Fans of Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train will thrill at this “perfect page-turner” (People)—that Reese Witherspoon describes as “one of those reads you just can’t put down!” This instant New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling novel follows an unforgettable young woman striving to create the perfect life—until a violent incident from her past threatens to unravel everything and expose her most shocking secret.

HER PERFECT LIFE IS A PERFECT LIE

As a teenager at the prestigious Bradley School, Ani FaNelli endured a shocking, public humiliation that left her desperate to reinvent herself. Now, with a glamorous job, expensive wardrobe, and handsome blue blood fiancé, she’s this close to living the perfect life she’s worked so hard to achieve.

But Ani has a secret.

There’s something else buried in her past that still haunts her, something private and painful that threatens to bubble to the surface and destroy everything.

With a singular voice and twists you won’t see coming, Luckiest Girl Alive explores the unbearable pressure that so many women feel to “have it all” and introduces a heroine whose sharp edges and cutthroat ambition have been protecting a scandalous truth, and a heart that's bigger than it first appears.

The question remains: will breaking her silence destroy all that she has worked for—or, will it at long last, set Ani free?

• ISBN10: 1442380519
• ISBN13: 9781442380516
• Publish Date: 12 May 2015
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Imprint: Simon & Schuster Audio
• Edition: Unabridged
• Format: Audiobook
• Pages: 304
• Language: English

Reviews

[Amber (The Literary Phoenix)]

The ideas and tragedy behind Luckiest Girl Alive is both immensely interesting and heartbreaking, but I didn't enjoy this book as much as I hope. And I guess I should have known better - most the reviews I read said the book was fairly mediocre. I think it's a bit better than mediocre, but I didn't connect with Ani.

Trigger warnings for the book include rape, group rape, homophobia, and just about the worst of any high school bullying situation you can imagine. The term "anorexia" is thrown around in there beginning like a lifestyle instead of a serious eating disorder. And there's a scene flush with horrifying violence, told in gut-wrenching detail. It's the turning point of the story, and important, but it turned my stomach.

I think I would have liked Luckiest Girl Alive more if the author hadn't spent so much time on Ani at the beginning - the Ani we meet is pretentious, insufferable... a completely unlikable character. The traumatic scenes are written flawlessly, but the rest is just plain annoying. This is all a farce of course - this picture of Ani is the part of the book that leads marketing teams to compare it to Gone Girl. That comparison, by the way, is terrible. This book and Gone Girl are telling such different stories with ultimately very different characters.

The point Jessica Knoll touches on and extremely important. I wish there was a better discussion about certain aspects (the homophobia, for one) but her illustration about the horrifying nature of rape culture and slut shaming is painful in the sort of way that makes you cringe because you know that people out there have experienced these horrors. The *author* has experienced these horrors. It's a good book to start a conversation about the importance of "no" and knowing boundaries... and of drawing up the importance of building the understanding of exactly what is rape.

[kalventure]

At the beginning of the novel I was entirely confused. To be honest, wondered if I had picked up the wrong book from my "to read" pile as the first chapter was so off from what I had read on the back cover. I re-read the back and confirmed that I am not senile just yet, and started back where I left off. The confusion never really went away, and I found myself skipping back to see if I missed something.

The book is written with jumps in time, each chapter is a different period of the narrator - TifAni, or just Ani - life, either present day at 28 or 14 years prior at the start of high school. There is no indication that this is happening, and as such the jumps are disjointed and jarring, although once I caught on I could at least expect it.

I will give it to Knoll in that the novel did not go where I thought it would on multiple occasions. Ani is unforgivably vapid and unrelatable, and the story is kind of flat, but I did keep reading it to find out what happened. A page turner, but not a very interesting one... which I think is somehow a feat.

I am left without strong feelings one way or another on this book, granted I appear to be the only person that hasn't read Gone Girl. I am sure that if I had my opinion would be less than neutral.

[Katie King]

Unsatisfactory ending.

[Sam@WLABB]

This book is pretty deep. Our MC, Ani, appears to be the luckiest girl alive. She's beautiful, has a rich, blue blood fiancee and a job at an iconic NY magazine. Inside, she is still struggling with her inner demons from the events that occurred over 14 years ago. I liked how the author flipped between the present and the past. It gave me insight into how Ani became this fairly unlikable woman. I couldn't help but feel sympathetic towards her. I enjoyed thinking I knew where the story was going and then another layer is revealed. I was ok with the ending. I think this was really a story of Ani coming to terms with her past and being able to accept who she really was instead of who she thought she had to be.