The Girl in the Castle

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I’m feeling torn on how to rate this book. I went in expecting a fantasy/sci-fi (the concept is Hannah is a girl in a modern psychiatric institution for teenagers, who is living a second life as a peasant in the 1300s) and it turned out to be quite different.

The lives of two girls named Hannah, living in different centuries on different continents, intersect. This raises a lot of questions. Which reality is the real one? How do the two realities relate? How will Hannah get through this? Well, by the end, there's not a lot of certain answers.Hannah Doe finds herself in Belman Psych at eighteen. How did she get here? According to her evaluation report, she was screaming and yelling about saving her sister and 'going to the castle'. But Hannah knows the truth. She is living two lives at different times. It may be easy to say she is crazy but it's harder to admit that she may be telling the truth.

I devoured in one sitting. I easily resonated with Hannah and other memorable patients of Belman Psych: Indy/ Adam and Michelle are obviously my favorites. The relationship between Hannah and Jordan was a little odd to me. Their attraction to each other didn't feel okay because he was an intern and she was a patient. It felt like there could have been potentially some power dynamic there. They don't hook up in the novel, however, but there is definitely attraction and Hannah does get jealous of seeing him with another woman. She does, however, hook up with the baron in her other reality who has sharable attributes to Jordan. NOW: Hannah knows the truth: she is Hannah Doe and Hannah Dory, and she must return to the past before it's too late to save her sister. Can Jordan, the Abnormal-Psych student who seems to truly care, be the one to finally help her? It was an easy read with some difficult content: Patterson and Raymond look at teen suicide, mental illness, class issues, and the way our society treats people who need help. Hannah Dory and her village are starving to death in a brutal winter. Hannah seeks out food and salvation in the baron’s castle. If she is caught stealing, she will surely hang.However, overall I really liked the book’s themes, and Hannah as a character. So I think I’ll give this book four stars today, and keep thinking about it — I think this will spur some really interesting discussions amongst its teen audience.