Luckiest Girl Alive

Luckiest Girl Alive, the 2015 debut novel of Cosmopolitan writer/editor Jessica Knoll, is a psychological thriller that investigates the long-term impact of emotional trauma. The book, which addresses women’s sexual rights, the pressures of adolescent bullying, and the dark psychology of school shootings, became an immediate New York Times best seller and was optioned as a film project for Netflix with Knoll serving as screenwriter. This study guide uses the 2015 Simon & Schuster paperback edition.

Twenty-eight-year-old Ani Fanelli, the narrator, appears to her friends and coworkers to be the luckiest girl alive. A prominent magazine writer living in New York, she is happy, successful, and engaged to marry into a blueblood family. However, she wrestles with twin traumas from her time in a swanky Philadelphia boarding school: a gangrape at a party followed within weeks by a school shooting that left five students dead, including two of her rapists. During the rampage, Ani killed one of the shooters. The invitation to participate in a film documentary on the anniversary of the shootings compels Ani to confront her demons and the implications of the elaborate public persona she has since created.

Plot Summary

The 17 chapters that make up Luckiest Girl Alive alternate between two narratives.