A Danger to Herself and Others by Alyssa Sheimel is a fresh take on the YA heroine. The main character, Hannah, is intelligent, interesting, and engaging. We meet her while she is under observation in an insane asylum due to an unfortunate accident involving one of her friends. Through her, we learn that she was having an affair with her best friend’s boyfriend, a boy she just happened to meet first… Hannah doesn’t shy away from her faults but her quick wit and sharp insight makes her almost immediately likable to the reader. Not so much to the other characters though. With her doctor, she is cagey, and with her best friend, she is deceitful. While locked away, she meets Lucy, a girl suffering from an eating disorder. Hannah, being the psychopath that she is, befriends Lucy in an attempt to show the people in charge that she is safe to release (not a danger to herself and others). But, when Lucy turns out not to be the person Hannah believed her to be, her whole world starts to unravel, taking Hannah with it.
