This is yet another book that has been touted as the next “Gone Girl” and/or “The Girl on the Train”. I can’t really wrap my brain around the comparison because it really is like neither of these in any way (from my perspective). Ani FaNelli is living a life quite different from the one she started from. Born to middle class parents and a mother who was always attempting to at least look as if she was upper class (even if it put the family into debt), Tiffani FaNelli started at an all girls’ school that the family can afford and is mildly prestigious. After being asked to leave her, her parents enroll her into Bradley Prep school (which if you live in Pennsylvania, you’ll see that it’s a thinly veiled Shipley School). Attempting to fit in at Bradley quickly turns disastrous and so very TRAGIC for Tiffani. However Ani assures us (as we keep bouncing from the present to the past), Tiffani leaves Bradley behind her, goes to college and reinvents herself. That’s what she tells herself, and that’s what the reader may think but as the story progresses, we see that there’s no way that Tiffani could leave any of that behind her…and in fact, the events that transpired at Bradley, have both shaped her and influences just about everything in her life.
As Ani (no longer Tiffani), she has achieved both her and her mother’s dreams. She’s bone thin, she writes an adventurous sex column, and she’s appears to be the perfect “Carolyn Bessette” to her incredibly wealthy fiance’s (Luke) JFK Jr.. She’s the epitome of effortless class and cool, until she gets invited to be a part of a documentary concerning a major plot point of the book (that would be a major spoiler). From there, things change and Ani has to decide if it’s worth being Ani or if she even knows who Ani is anymore. Has she ever been Ani or is it all just a facade?
And that my friends was a piss poor review because to talk about any points of the plot would give too much away. I will say that Ani comes off as a super flake at the beginning of the book; someone who cares only about appearances but as you read, you see that she’s a survivor in several ways, not just emotionally. When I finished the book, I was angry that she really had no one to help her out except for one 24 year old male teacher who tried and ended up losing his job over the (true) accusations that he leveled at several male students at Bradley. After reading this book, I realized that the author herself went to the Shipley School (a pretty prestigious prep school on the Main Line in Pennsylvania) and I really,really wondered if her art was imitating her own life in any way (she’s been the senior editor at Cosmo,she looks like the main character she described, she went to Shipley and she currently lives in NYC) and am really hoping that this is strictly fictional ( I know at least the one part is). It was a good read (one that I didn’t want to put down at all), but I don’t think that I would ever describe it as a “summer beach read” or your next “devilishly dark and fun read” as I see it described randomly on different sites. I would say that this was a tragedy with a few funny lines and an f’ing strong ass female character who has had to face so many awful horrors but still manages to come out on top.
