Book Review: I Am Her Revenge by Meredith Moore

I Am Her Revenge

by Meredith Moore

3.82 of 5 stars 

She can be anyone you want her to be.
Vivian was raised with one purpose in life: to exact revenge on behalf of her mother. Manipulative and cruel, Mother has deprived Vivian not only of a childhood, but of an original identity. With an endless arsenal of enticing personalities at her disposal, Vivian is a veritable weapon of deception.

And she can destroy anyone.
When it’s time to strike, she enrolls in a boarding school on the English moors, where she will zero in on her target: sweet and innocent Ben, the son of the man who broke Mother’s heart twenty years ago.

Anyone… except for the woman who created her.
With every secret she uncovers, Vivian comes one step closer to learning who she really is. But the more she learns about herself, the more dangerous this cat and mouse game becomes. Because Mother will stop at nothing to make sure the truth dies with her. 

I Am Her Revenge by Meredith Moore is a fanciful book bordering on unrealistic. It begins with the heroine Vivian making the grand entrance into a boarding school in Yorkshire. We gradually find out the sole purpose she goes to that school a month into her senior year is solely to entice another student, Ben Collingsworth. Extremely weird and creepy. Worse, it’s her mother Morgana who’s behind all the elaborate plots. Ages ago, Ben’s father broke Morgana’s heart, and she’s bent on revenge: I have a daughter, and you have a son; it’s a match made in heaven. She plants Vivian into the school through questionable means and expects her daily and weekly report on the seduction plan. As Vivian goes through the plan, she discovers Ben is a nice person and does not deserve ruin. The rest are spoilers.

The book’s setting is in England, but I can’t help but think it’s an alternate universe entirely. That’s the only reason the whole irrational revenge plot can progress. Moreover, children and even young adults play with Avatars called Ava that can talk with them and be their “friends.” This phenomenon is probably what kids would do before social media, but Moore published this book in 2015, so it must be another universe in which kids don’t have Facebook or Instagram or Twitter to feed their ego and have fake friends. While I applaud Moore’s effort to create a world suitable to her story, it’s just too unrealistic to be believable.

Vivian is a narcissistic person. She thinks she can charm anyone and with her charisma and “skills” and is quite proud of her looks. “I am irresistible,” she actually says somewhere. She callously hurts or flatters teachers and students, whichever suits her agenda. In many instances, she excuses herself as a product of her mother’s upbringing. She also believes her mother “deserves her revenge. He broke her heart, so now she’ll break his.” Vivian is either extremely naive and stupid or severely brainwashed. Hilariously, the author is not willing to let such a vapid person go without a redeeming quality. Vivian can somehow draw with amazing talent. So yes, the only thing she can’t do is looking carefully at her mother’s revenge plan and seeing the obvious ludicrousness of it all.

Vivian’s mother Morgana is also the craziest person in the book. She treats Vivian with unspeakable cruelty and treachery just for her “revenge.” For example, when Vivian takes home several homeless kittens, her mother slits their throats and makes Vivian watch the whole process just to teach her a lesson on not loving anything in the world. I couldn’t understand Morgana and her silly obsession with revenge: your boyfriend falls in love with someone else. What a tool! But you don’t spend the rest of your life plotting his downfall and implicate your daughter and another innocent young man into your game. But of course, the author discovers the improbability of ending the story with such a revenge plan (not all of us can be Alexandre Dumas), and she thankfully concocts a slapdash but plausible theory that explains Morgana’s action. In short, Morgana is one seriously dotty but vivid character. 

Yet another inexplicable and bizarre duo in the book is the Helper and the Boy. There’s no given reason for them to stick with Morgana and do her dirty works. She has somehow wound the Helper around her little finger, so that probably explains why he’s willing to dance to her pipe. But the Boy? The Boy has no name because his father the Helper never named him. So it’s up to our heroine to name him Arthur, in keeping with the Arthurian theme going on in the book. And he can write poetry. What is life.

I Am Her Revenge is an incredibly strange and laughable book. It’s plot is fundamentally flawed, and its pacing is probably a main reason many readers DNF. It’s like a creaky elevator that inches to the top floor and then before you know it, the cable breaks and whoosh, whoosh, BAM, the end. If you’re looking for an amusing read and isn’t too fazed by stupidity, you can try it. Forewarned is forearmed.