Review: A DANGER TO HERSELF AND OTHERS by Alyssa B. Sheinmel

 

A Danger to Herself and Others by Alyssa B. Sheinmel
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Only when she’s locked away does the truth begin to escape…

Four walls. One window. No way to escape. Hannah knows there's been a mistake. She didn't need to be institutionalized. What happened to her roommate at her summer program was an accident. As soon as the doctors and judge figure out that she isn't a danger to herself or others, she can go home to start her senior year. In the meantime, she is going to use her persuasive skills to get the staff on her side.

Then Lucy arrives. Lucy has her own baggage. And she may be the only person who can get Hannah to confront the dangerous games and secrets that landed her in confinement in the first place.

---

AMAZING. Seriously, that's the only way to describe this book. It is truly amazing.

In the opening pages, we meet Hannah Gold. She's a confident and likeable narrator, and she's just been institutionalised. But she tells us not to worry. It's just a mistake, her being there. It's because Agnes, her best friend and roommate at summer school, is in a coma with brain damage, and Agnes's parents mistakenly believe that Hannah was involved. But as soon as Agnes wakes up or her parents talk to Jonah, Agnes's boyfriend, Hannah's name will be cleared and she'll be back out in the real world.

The writing in this book is just so compelling. I was sucked in right away, completely on Hannah's side. We're given little snippets of info at the right time to keep us reading--this is one of the best books I've read for pacing--and we gradually begin to piece together a picture of what happened to Agnes that's led a psychiatrist to believe Hannah is a danger to herself and others. Indeed, being a danger to herself and others--those exact words--becomes a motif in this book as we learn Hannah is more than a little obsessed with it. But, still, we're thinking that's fair enough. And if I was in that situation, I don't think I'd be as calm as Hannah. She's handling it all well.

Now, the rest of this review will contain spoilers--because I have to talk about these twists. THEY ARE AMAZING.

So, Hannah gets a roommate, Lucy. Lucy is a ballerina who has an eating disorder and a dark secret--she wanted to hurt one of her rival ballerinas. She wanted to push her, take away her dancing ability. And it's when Hannah meets Lucy that we begin to suspect that Hannah isn't quite as level-headed as she lets on. She becomes obsessed with Lucy, wanting to be her best friend (giving Lucy no choice) as she believes if the doctor sees how she's best friends with Lucy, they'll know she's not a danger to herself and others--and then she'll be out.

Hannah's having therapy sessions throughout the novel with Dr. Lightfoot (not the real name, named by Hannah because the doctor wears ballet slippers), and in those sessions, we see Hannah open up more and more. She is a very complex character, and we learn of her childhood, seeing the pivotal moments that shaped her into this arrogant and intelligent character: her parents took her to grown-up meetings, left her in hotel rooms, made her eat oysters as a child. And she was rewarded for acting like a grown up. She wasn't allowed to be a child.

Hannah, at the summer school, also had an affair with Jonah--the guy we are told is Agnes's boyfriend. But then we get the twists. Neither Jonah or Lucy are real. I was gobsmacked at this reveal, but they're both hallucinations. And oh my goodness, I could not stop reading this book at this point (and I'd been so addicted to it before).

I've had hallucinations myself, and this really just 'got' me. Especially how we see Hannah in denial about this--insisting her friends are real--and then coming to terms to it. She then frets about how can she know if anything at all is real? She doubts all her memories, and I just loved this. It reflected exactly my own thought processes.

We never find out the diagnosis that Hannah has--and I think that really worked in this book. Instead, we see her at the hearing as she's cleared of being the cause of Agnes's accident, and we see her leaving the hospital once she's medicated. We see her moments of doubt, her delusions, and we also meet her parents. And wow, that characterisation is incredible. The parents are so cold and calculating that I desperately wanted Hannah to go back to the hospital where Dr Lightfoot was. Because she cared more for Hannah than her own parents did. And that was heartbreaking.

This is just an incredible book. Highly recommended.


View all my reviews