As we all know when a popular movie comes out, we must have the movie in novelization form. How else will we learn what the characters are thinking? Even though it’s basically a rehash of what we already saw onscreen.
Well, Elizabeth Rudnick’s book takes a creative angle in simply focusing on the point of view of the false couple. Anna and Hans.

Now Anna’s side of the story is decent. It fits in line with what we see in the movie, we get a little more of how lonely she was in the palace, how much she misses her sister, a bit more of the sadder side to the usually upbeat princess.

But the true star of the novel for me was Hans. It gives his backstory! We see his life on the Southern Isles with his brother who are awful. His dad is awful, in fact most of the men in the family seem to be tyrannical sadists, and the women beaten down and scared. Hans even says he feels bad for the women arranged to marry one of his brothers, that he knows she’ll end up as withdrawn and listless as his mother. The implication of spousal abuse is pretty dark!

Not to mention, the line where he gives himself splinters because the pain makes him feel better. Okay, self-harm references too, just wow.

So, yeah I’m all prime to feel bad for Hans. I’ll admit in the movie I enjoyed him because he wasn’t the typical villain, but now this makes me even more sympathetic.

But don’t worry Frozen fans, he is still cold at the core. While it does keep some sympathy on him in the beginning, showing that his scheme to marry Anna in the beginning was geuine and he didn’t first plan to murder her (He figured she’d be a pretty trophy wife more or less and let him do the ruling) and mainly focused on his desperation that this was his one shot to leave the Southern Isles.

But even though Hans was disgusted by his father’s cruelty and disregard for others, he does not see those traits in himself as he does the exact same things. After the backstory, the book pretty much follows the movie but it does an interesting job in depicting Hans from beaten down thirteenth brother, hopeful and desperate to meet Anna, to a cold man obssessed with getting the throne. It was great because it didn’t feel out of character but a natural progression of his darker impulses taking over, out of desperation sure but just because he is so desperate to leave his home, doesn’t mean he should have manipulated and stepped on so many people to get his way.

An excellent book if you want to get more insight into Hans and the making of a sociopathetic chameleon. And Anna too. But let’s be honest, Hans is the true star of the book, we already Anna’s story from the movies and there is not much more insight given here.