Melissa begins her diary a virgin, but a stormy affair at the age of fourteen leads her to regard sex as a means of self-discovery, and for the next two years she plunges into a succession of encounters with various partners, male and female, her age and much older, some met through schoolmates, others through newspaper ads and Internet chat rooms. In graphic detail she describes her entry into a Dantesque underworld of eroticism, where she willingly participates in group sex and sadomasochism, as well as casual pickups. Melissa’s secret life is concealed from family and friends, revealed only in her diary entries. Told with disarming candour, Melissa P.’s bittersweet tour of extreme desires is as poignant as it is titillating. ‘It is easy to see why it was a massive bestseller in Italy … clever, dark, gothic-style, twenty-first century fairy tale.’ — The Barcelona Review ‘Melissa tells herself no fairy tales – and therein lies the odd, potent purity of these pages.’ — Publishers Weekly ‘A book that has had a wallop of an impact … readers have simply devoured it.’ — The New York Times