Hysteria

by MS Megan Miranda

After stabbing and killing her boyfriend, sixteen-year-old Mallory, who has no memory of the event, is sent away to a boarding school to escape the gossip and threats, but someone or something is following her.

• ISBN10: 0802723101
• ISBN13: 9780802723109
• Publish Date: 5 February 2013
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 9 July 2021
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Walker & Company
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 326
• Language: English

Reviews

[kimbacaffeinate]

3.5 stars This was my first time reading Megan Miranda’s works and I must say I enjoyed Hysteria. While not flawless, it did offer up a fascinating suspense thriller that kept me entertained. She brings us up close and personal into the mental struggle Mallory faces after she murders her boyfriend. With twists and turns at every corner Miranda kept me on edge.

The tale begins in the aftermath of the murder and the investigation that followed. Mallory killed her boyfriend in self-defense on a fateful evening and the ramifications are wide-spread. Her parents have decided to send her away to Monroe a private boarding school that her father once attended. Mallory is a mess, she is having nightmares, thinks she is being haunted by Brian the boy she killed and to make matters worse she thinks her own parents are afraid of her. She thinks that once she reaches the school that the nightmares and shadows will stop but boy is she wrong. To make matters worse something sinister is going on and Mallory’s dreams are actually causing her physical pain. The tale that unfolds was at times crazy with its twists and turns and I found myself delightfully entertained.

I am not sure I actually like Mallory, but I felt for her as she tried to piece together events from that fateful evening. I thought she was strong when dealing with all the emotional baggage that came with it. She suffers from guilt, a fear that she is evil and she is definitely unstable. I really liked her BFF, Coleen and loved their banter. Reid is interesting and his connection to Mallory was interesting. As much as I liked the way he supported Mallory, we never really got to know him. The romance was complicated, mostly because of Mallory’s issues and it didn’t really add or deter from the tale. The bad girl click was a little cliché, as one girl dominates and abuses the weaker girls. Jason is the big man on campus and struts around like he is all that but he made me cringe. While the parents were present and it’s obvious they care about Mallory they are dolts. Why isn’t Mallory in counseling? Why does her Mom care more about appearances? GRRR!

There is a lot going on in Hysteria and it certainly kept my attention. I read this in a little under three hours. While parts were predictable I liked the complications and additional murder. At times I really questioned whether some of this was all in Mallory’s head and couldn’t help but wonder if as I turned the page I would discover she was in a rubber room somewhere and this was all a dream. How much can one girl handle? I liked the sensation of not really knowing for sure, and the thread regarding the second murder was fascinating. We see growth in Mallory but I was disappointed that the other characters weren't as fleshed out. Miranda ties all the threads together at the end but, I am just not sure I believed all of them.

Hysteria certainly entertained me and kept me on edge as I sought to unravel the events that occurred the night Mallory murdered her boyfriend and figure out what was happening in the aftermath. Overall this was a solid read but I have a feeling reviews will be mixed on this one. I still have Fractured on my wish list and intend to read it soon.

I want to thank Bloomsbury for providing this ARC in exchange for my unbiased review.
originally published on my blog Kimba @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer

[Rowena]

This book follows Mallory as she transfers to her father’s old prep school, Monroe. Mallory is sent to Monroe because things have gotten pretty hard for her at home ever since…she killed her boyfriend, Brian. There are things about that night that Mallory can’t remember but she does remember that Brian is dead because of her. She knows that it was self defense but there are things from that night that are just outside her memory.

Things with Brian weren’t all that great for Mallory, according to her best friend Colleen. Colleen wasn’t a fan of Brian and Mallory because Mallory wasn’t Mallory when she was with him and because of Brian’s violent history, the case was dismissed and Brian’s family was torn apart.

Brian’s mother went crazy and started harassing Mallory so much that Mallory’s parents had to get a restraining order and Brian’s brother Dylan was shipped to live with his father up in Massachusetts.

Dylan. The boy that should have been Mallory’s but he had a girlfriend. So Mallory moved on from Dylan…with his brother, Brian.

Dylan wasn’t too happy about it but what could he do? He was already in a relationship and so he passed on Mallory. Brian’s friends want to make sure that Mallory feels their grief and their anger so they give her a hard time, such a hard time that Mallory is shipped out.

Now, Mallory is miles away from the only home she’s ever known and she’s thrown into the mix that is Monroe Prep School. She doesn’t know anyone until she comes across someone she does know, Reid. Reid’s father and Mallory’s father were roommates back in their Monroe days and she used to see Reid every few years since they were little. The last time she saw Reid, she made a pass at him and he didn’t take it because well, they were at his father’s funeral. He was going through some stuff.

Now, it’s three years later and they’re going to school together. Reid wants to be her friend but Mallory is all kinds of messed up. She’s not sleeping and when she does sleep, she’s having nightmares about Brian. He’s haunting her every waking moment and she’s kind of taking a break from boys. Things at school aren’t going the way she’d thought they would because there are bullies here and one of those bullies seems to be out to get her. He makes her completely uncomfortable and he goes out of his way to make things hard for Mallory and to be honest, it didn’t fit with what I know about teens.

What I really didn’t understand is that Mallory killed Brian. She really did. She stabbed him and he bled out in her parents house. She’s dealing with the blood on her hands from that and she’s still getting bullied. Everyone that is bullying her, knows what she did and yet, they’re still bullying her. What’s wrong with this picture? You can bet your damn bottom dollar that if I knew that someone killed another person, in self defense or not…I would not be making fun of them, making things hard for them or anything. Unless, I wanted her to kill me too so why weren’t these kids afraid of Mallory?
It didn’t make sense to me.

I would think that it would be hard for Mallory to deal with this and the author did a really good job with making me feel Mallory’s pain and her issues but the whole thing with the kids and the bullying and the framing, I just couldn’t understand why they’d pick on someone who killed someone else.

Aside from the bullying, this book was interesting. It was really slow to pick up but before I knew what was what, I was invested in the story and even though I wasn’t completely satisfied with the way that things turned out (the whole thing with Dylan at the end gave me a total WTF moment) but still, I’m not sorry that I read this book. It was an enjoyable read and while it wasn’t perfect, it was still enjoyable. I enjoyed the romance between Reid and Mallory and the friendship between Colleen and Mallory. Those two are what friends are supposed to be like. Ride or die. That was those two and yeah, I liked this one.

[Angie]

I received an ARC through NetGalley.

I’m not normally a reader of thrillers, but this one sounded really good! Unfortunately, I should have stuck with gut and passed on it. First, the blurb is a little misleading. We don’t know what Mallory doesn’t remember everything from the night she killed her boyfriend. We get bits and pieces of the story throughout the book, but it isn’t until the end when Mallory mentions that she’s remembered something new. Also, her past does indeed follow her to the new school, since someone there does know what she did and why she had to transfer, and they know her from the past. So that blurb isn’t totally accurate.

One of my first problems with Hysteria was that the writing felt very repetitive. Almost every chapter or tense scene ends with some variation of “And then I was running” or “I ran away.” Mallory was always running from something, all the time. She’d go to class, overhear something on the way to her dorm, pop some sleeping pills, think she sees something and runs away. Lather, rinse, repeat. It got boring fast.

My other problem was why she was sent to a boarding school in the first place. It seems like a strange decision for parents to send their teenager away after she’s been through something terrible. Out of sight, out of mind? Definitely. Mallory does not do well at the new school at all, so clearly it was a bad decision.

As for the mystery aspect, I was intrigued. Is Mallory suffering from hysteria, or did someone really follow her to her new school? Or is Brian haunting her and leaving bruises on her shoulder? I was surprised by the answer to these, but once it was revealed I still had questions. I can’t say what those questions are without spoiling anything though. Then there’s the whole murdered student plot. Of course, Mallory is the number one suspect, but who else could have done it? I didn’t figure this one out either, but the big reveal was really lame. I still don’t understand what the motive was, and the whole thing felt incomplete. What happened to the murderer(s) at the end?

In the end, this one left me with more questions, instead of resolving everything. I am just really bothered by the lack of reason or motive behind the murder and other crimes committed, which kept me from enjoying this one.

Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.

[Linda]

*ARC received on November 5th 2012 courtesy of Netgalley*

Full review can be found on my blog (un)Conventional Bookviews.

This was a very nice surprise! The suspense was very well done, I had no idea what was real and what wasn't, and at the same time, I wanted to take Mallory in my arms and hug her and tell her everything would be OK - even if I had no idea if it would or not.