Becky's Great Book Reviews Dear Hanna by Zoje Stage

I was halfway through Zoje Stage's Dear Hanna before I realized it was a sequel to the electifying Baby Teeth. Dear Hanna grabbed me by the first page and easily can be a stand alone novel. However, to realize I was reading about a grownup version of the disturbed seven-year-old girl from Baby Teeth made it all the more compelling.

Hanna is now twenty and working as a phlebotomist. Although she's very good at finding veins with needles and making it painless, Hanna doesn't mind purposefully making a patient hurt sometimes. To get a little frustration out. But only if she finds the patient annoying. Oh, and she loves blood. Hanna thinks it's beautiful.

After meeting a handsome man and his twelve-year-old daughter at work, she sets her sights to marrying him. Hanna doesn't mind being a stepmother, and seems to feel something close to love for the girl. However, when their cozy little family of three is disrupted by something no one could have foreseen, Hanna decides that she will do whatever it takes to re-establish equilbrium.

Interspersed with letters to and from Hanna's brother Gustav, readers get glimpses at Hanna's early life and why she was banished to a special "school" as a child. Hint: it wasn't because she was gifted. In fact, Hanna inflicted bodily harm on her own mother. Hanna being a sociopath is not the big twist in this novel, but it is the driver of the fascination. Private conversations with a homemade beanbag doll (named Skog) from her childhood is just one of the creepy attributes the friendless Hanna demonstrates.

Stage's nuanced depiction of Hanna keeps the story from becoming hackneyed; she has layers and compassion that peep out even while calculating evil deeds like plotting murder. Hanna's "Other self" (as she calls her alter-ego) is the star of the show and this reader was on the edge of her seat waiting to find out what Hanna would do. This novel of psychological suspense was pretty thrilling and I give it four stars out of five.