Hysteria by Megan Miranda

Release Date: February 5, 2013
Publisher: Walker Childrens
Age Group: Young Adult
Format: ARC
Source: Publisher
Pages: 336
Buy: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / IndieBound
Description: Goodreads
Mallory killed her boyfriend, Brian. She can't remember the details of that night but everyone knows it was self-defense, so she isn't charged. But Mallory still feels Brian's presence in her life. Is it all in her head? Or is it something more? In desperate need of a fresh start, Mallory is sent to Monroe, a fancy prep school where no one knows her . . . or anything about her past. But the feeling follows her, as do her secrets. Then, one of her new classmates turns up dead. As suspicion falls on Mallory, she must find a way to remember the details of both deadly nights so she can prove her innocence-to herself and others.

In another riveting tale of life and death, Megan Miranda's masterful storytelling brings readers along for a ride to the edge of sanity and back again.

I'm going to be honest. I've been in a major reading slump lately, and have been desperately waiting for that book that would exceed my expectations and get me psyched about reading again. Boy, did Hysteria do the trick! It was just the novel to get my blood pumping. 

From the novel's first line, "My mother hid the knife block," to the very last chapters, I was hooked. A mere three hours was all it took for me to plow through Megan Miranda's sophomore novel. Effortless in its construction and perfectly paced, Hysteria is an engrossing tale that's easy to lose yourself in. Give it less than your full attention and the clues to solving this psychological mystery might just breeze right by you. 

Mallory's been haunted since the night she killed Brian. Haunted by his ghost, by her surroundings, by her memories... or lack of memories. She's desperate for a moment's peace, free of the feeling that someone or something is following her. Even sleep doesn't offer safety since she drifts off every night to the last sounds she recalls hearing before Brian bled out on her kitchen floor. 

In hopes of getting away from the town where she's known as a killer, Mallory goes to her father's prep school alma mater, but the promise of a fresh start is short-lived. She realizes that some of the students know what she did, and worse she begins to believe that her past is coming after her to make her remember and possibly to make her pay. It's only when another tragedy occurs and all clues point to her that Mallory is forced to reconstruct both bloody nights. As she struggles to clear her name once again, she'll finally unlock the memory that reveals what set events in motion on the night Brian died. 

Hysteria pulls off what so many novels of its kind fail to do, flip-flopping between past and present without muddying the timeline of the story. Told in flashbacks within chapters, Mallory gradually pieces things together. While non-linear, the flashbacks are easy to follow and are seamlessly woven into the story so that you're never taken out of the moment for too long. 

The plot was outstanding and not even worth trying to nit-pick because I enjoyed it so thoroughly as it was whizzing past. Characters on the other hand left me wanting since they don't run very deep outside the core  group. Mallory, her best friend Colleen, love interest Reid and even Brian's little brother Dylan are three-dimensional enough that they stand up to the emotionally wrought story. The flashbacks of Brian even make him seem like a fully developed character, regardless of the fact that he's dead when the story begins. However, the Monroe school crew come off as alterations of archetypes. The cocky boarding school boy. The mean girls. Recognizable, but not the least bit relatable since they never truly evolved into fully formed people. 

The good news is that Hysteria has such a strong backbone in its story and writing that it carries the handful of characters who don't seem to pull their own weight and evoke emotion from the reader. In fact, it was only after finishing the book and digesting it a bit that I realized how few of the characters resonated with me. 

As intricate as it is intense, Hysteria is breath of fresh air in the YA genre thanks to its crisp voice, focused plot and sobering portrait of how quickly lives are redefined in the midst of tragedy. If you're looking for a break from love triangles, do yourself a favor and pick this one up. It's sure to leave an impression.

Blog Tour: Hysteria by Megan Miranda

I'm thrilled to be kicking of the Hysteria Blog Tour today with a visit from the author now and a review that will post tomorrow. Author Megan Miranda is here for a quick interview about her heart-pounding sophomore novel Hysteria in which she discusses how the story got its start and the keys to its construction. Hope you all enjoy!

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Megan Miranda was a scientist and high school teacher before writing Fracture, which came out of her fascination with scientific mysteries—especially those associated with the brain. Megan has a BS in biology from MIT and spent her post-college years either rocking a lab coat or reading books. She lives near Charlotte, North Carolina, where she volunteers as an MIT Educational Counselor. 

Bio from author's website.

Where to find her... 

Twitter / Facebook / Goodreads

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Tell us a little about the story seed that grew into Hysteria. Was there one image or line that started it all? If so, what?

I usually start with characters instead of premise. In this case, a girl (who was, at the time, nameless) who killed her boyfriend. I knew the story was going to start after this, and that this girl would be pretty different from the girl who existed before this event. But I didn't really have a sense of story yet. So I gave myself a writing prompt—a first sentence—to help me set the tone of the book and to discover where the story might go. So I guess you could say that first sentence was the seed of Hysteria: "My mother hid the knife block."

But the first sign that this would actually grow into a story didn't happen until I got about 100 pages in to the first draft (and then went back to the beginning). My main character was being haunted by something, and I wasn't entirely clear on what that something was. But then I got sucked in to the idea of haunting, and all the ways that word can be used, and all the things that can haunt… so when I sat down to write the story that became Hysteria, in my mind, it was going to be about "a girl who can’t be charged for murder, and things that can haunt."

In your mind, what is the key to writing a psychological thriller? How's does it play into Hysteria? 

Oh, I’d be curious to see answers from different writers, because I’d imagine we each approach it pretty differently, and I am by no means an expert on the topic. For me, I think there are two types of psychological thrillers: the type where you question what's real (like in Black Swan), and the type where the main character is being challenged, or harassed, in a game of minds… like in Silence of the Lambs.

For me, the key is that the narrator has to question… question what’s really happening, question themselves, question if things are real. This can be either because the narrator is unreliable, or because someone is messing with the main character's head in the context of a thriller. I think the main character and the mechanism of the implied danger are the two key components to creating a psychological thriller.

I definitely kept this in mind when writing Hysteria. I tried to have two different thriller-esque elements. The internal: What is happening to Mallory? And what happened in the past? Is it real? Is she losing her mind? And also, something external: Is someone messing with her? Is someone after her? And if so… why?

Mallory has two tragedies during the course of the novel that she is forced to remember. How did she, in essence, reconstruct the crime scenes?

The interesting thing about the first crime scene, for me, was that Mallory remembered some of it. She remembered enough to reconstruct what some people believed was the truth. This was something I was very interested in while writing the book—the way eye-witnesses remember parts and their minds can fill in the rest. It’s not until she remembers a pivotal moment, which is triggered by a big moment in the story, that she pieces together that key middle section that was missing, and sees the scenes anew with that other element.

As for the latter crime, well… it’s harder for her to reconstruct that one, I think, because she’s not quite an eye witness. She has to rely on observing the actions, and words, of others, and that one is a little more like solving a mystery.

What's the next project you are working on? Describe it in five words.

Fracture sequel. Decker’s story. Cursed.