A Danger to Herself and Others by Alyssa B. Sheinmel

A Danger to Herself and Others by Alyssa B. Sheinmel
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Only when she's locked away does the truth begin to escape...

Seventeen-year-old Hannah Gold has always been treated like a grown up. As the only child of two New York professionals, she's been traveling the world and functioning as a miniature adult since the day she was born. But that was then. Now, Hannah has been checked into a remote treatment facility, stripped of all autonomy and confined to a single room.

Hannah knows there's been a mistake. What happened to her roommate that summer was an accident. As soon as the doctor and judge figure out that she isn't a danger to herself or others, she can get back to her life of promise and start her final year at school. Until then, she's determined to win over the staff and earn some privileges so she doesn't lose her mind to boredom.

But then she's assigned a new roommate. At first, Lucy is the perfect project to keep Hannah's focus off all she is missing at home. But Lucy may be the one person who can make Hannah confront the secrets she's avoiding - and the dangerous games that landed her in confinement in the first place.

A glimpse into the mind of a mental health patient this novel, aimed at YA’s reveals the fragile line between reality and psychotic illness.


Hannah finds herself institutionalised when her best friend and room mate falls from their second floor room and as a consequence suffers severe brain damage. Believing Hannah had some part in this she is sent to a mental hospital because it’s believed she is a danger to herself and others. While there she is assessed over many months and in her belief that it’s all been a huge mistake she works hard to please the doctors so she can be released.

The story is tightly woven so that the reader almost becomes Hannah in that the reader also is unsure of the reality or the psychosis that Hannah experiences. Frighteningly the deeper the psychosis and her logical analysis goes the cloudier the lines get between reality and imagination.

An insightful and disturbing read it almost shouldn’t be YA material in my view because of the vulnerability of this age group. Having said this it is a powerful and thought provoking novel that is sadly tragic and highlighted for me the inevitability of the stigma attached to mental illness and the vulnerability of its sufferers.

I would like to thank the publisher for sending this in exchange for an honest review.