by Zoje Stage
Part of Hanna
First published 2024
Hanna Jensen sits in her pristine home, watching her teenage stepdaughter Joelle across the breakfast table. At twenty-four, Hanna has built what looks like a perfect life with her real estate agent husband Jacob. She works as a phlebotomist, drawing blood from patients who never suspect her true nature. Sixteen years have passed since she attempted to murder her own mother as a child. Therapy sessions and countless letters to her younger brother have helped her control the violent impulses that once consumed her. But Joelle is changing in ways that threaten Hanna's carefully constructed world. The teenager's rebellion disrupts the order Hanna needs to maintain her facade of normalcy. As her domestic life begins to unravel, Hanna feels the familiar pull of her old patterns. The urge to manipulate and control grows stronger each day. She starts planning again, calculating how to bend the people around her to her will. The little girl who once terrorized her family has grown into something far more dangerous.
Genres: fiction, domestic-fiction, adult, adult-fiction, thriller, psychological-thriller
Vibes: dark, introspective, menacing, psychological, suspenseful, unsettling
Tropes: dark-past, domestic-conflict, psychological-manipulation, unreliable-narrator
331 pages · Kindle Edition · Thomas & Mercer
Content warnings: child-abuse, mental-illness, violence