Literary Hub, A Most Anticipated Book of the Year
“Johansson’s debut novel, Antiquity, was a slow burn, sensual and troubling. Her follow-up—a thriller about two young women who spark up a suffocating romance after one accidentally takes the other’s coat in a café—sounds a little like Single White Female, a little like Vertigo, and exactly like the queer doppelgänger story I’ve been dying to read.” —Jasmine Vojdani, Vulture
“[D]reamlike, uneasy, minimalist . . . this book is one for readers who love to puzzle slowly over writing, who seek out their own meaning in a piece of fiction.” —Parisa Hashempour, The Skinny
“In the grand tradition of All About Eve and Mulholland Drive and 3 Women, Johansson’s novel is a strange, twisty story about obsession and identity and how easy it can be to lose yourself completely.” —McKayla Coyle, Literary Hub
“[A] dizzying hall-of-mirrors narrative . . . Johansson artfully teases out the echoes between the narrative threads . . . Readers will be entranced.” —Publishers Weekly
“Thrilling, seductive, and unsettling . . . This lights-out, under-the-covers read delivers a captivating account of desire, obsession, and the ghosts within us.” —Booklist
“[T]he book is written with marvelously cool composure . . . readers may find the book seductively mysterious.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Clean, poetic, and endlessly enticing, this windy tale of obsession had me hooked and spooked. Single White Female with a chicly bleak Scandinavian sensibility.” —Brittany Newell, author of Soft Core
“A razor sharp novel of exquisite prose and uncanny tension, Body Double lures the unsuspecting reader into a sophisticated hall of mirrors where obsession blurs the lines between self and other. Bravo!” —Antoine Wilson, author of Mouth to Mouth
“Hanna Johansson is Hitchcock-like . . . She puts her reader in a state of constant tension . . . Reading Body Double is like following a game of cups and balls with concentration, letting your eyes focus on the cup under which you think the ball is hiding . . . The dizzying uncertainty contributes to the strange atmosphere of a novel in which Hanna Johansson raises the stakes considerably and leads the reader into an intricately constructed hall of mirrors of exquisite prose.” —Svenska Dagbladet
“The first thing I want to do after finishing Hanna Johansson’s second novel is to read it again . . . Body Double is not only a masterful novel in the footsteps of the film, it is a story about loneliness and about being created in someone else’s eyes. But also about what remains in the absence of that person.” —Aftonbladet
“An incredibly successful thriller in the spirit of Hitchcock . . . Stylistically, Johansson works with repetition, displacement, confusion, and resolution. A coat temporarily changes hands—and everything is thrown into turmoil. It is incredibly well done from beginning to end.” —Göteborgs-Posten
“[Johansson] writes the eerie thriller atmosphere very skilfully and engagingly. Here, every little detail, however insignificant it may seem, sooner or later puts everything at stake. The novel is imbued with a film aesthetic, particularly nineties horror, but also with a Paul Austerian urban environment of oppressive claustrophobia and paranoia, together with a voyeurism derived from Hitchcock. Just like the characters in the novel, I as a reader am forced to look over my shoulder and question what is real.” —Sydsvenskan
“It is skilfully executed, the kind of work of art that you admire from half a meter away and think I will never be that good. But it is precisely these images and moods that haunt me after reading. Not the people, and not the feelings. Because I know that real life is not that beautiful. It doesn’t matter—I admire the text anyway. From a distance.” —Expressen
“Body Double is a book about obsession—which you can easily become obsessed with . . . The novel’s aesthetically pleasing world-building is at least as well-written as its thriller plot . . . Body Double is a novel for all of us who are obsessed: with the strangely uncanny, with beautiful things, and with obsession itself. Johansson shows great control and skilful craftsmanship—there is no doubt that she has done a very good job of following up her acclaimed debut.” —Lundagård
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