Book Review: Hysteria – Megan Miranda

Hysteria
Author: Megan Miranda
Series: None
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, Romance, Mystery, Horror
Publisher: Walker Childrens
My Rating:

Summary:

 
First Sentence: My mother hid the knife block.

My Review:

I enjoyed reading Megan Miranda’s debut novel, Fracture, mainly due to Delaney and Decker’s strong bond. Their bond was sweet, loving, and you could easily see how much they cared about one anther. When I heard that Megan Miranda was writing another book, Hysteria, I was beyond excited to get my hands on it. The synopsis reminded me a bit of I Know What You Did Last Summer by Lois Duncan, but I figured out that Megan Miranda might do something unique to it – maybe a special plot twist – and easily pull it off. I was dead wrong. Hysteria is in a completely different league from Fracture – it was boring, lacked any kind of emotional value, and was desperately lacking suspense and most importantly, horror.

I couldn’t connect with any of the characters. Most of the characters were superficial and two-dimensional characters with the exception of Mallory, Colleen, and Reid. I could easily describe all the characters using a single word: evil, popular, or weak. Since I didn’t connect with any of the characters, that caused Fracture to also lack any sort of emotional value for me. When Mallory nearly dies, who cares? When one of them were hurt, who cares?

I absolutely, completely, 100% hated Mallory with a passion. Now the reason why I hate Mallory might be a minor spoiler, but you’ll find out about this in the first 5% of the book anyway, so I’m going to go ahead and explain why I hate her. So Mallory likes this guy. He already has a girlfriend, but likes Mallory back. He doesn’t break up with his girlfriend, so she decided to go after his older brother. Then, yes, I’m not finished, then she kills this older brother. And oh my goodness, that’s not all! Two months later, she re-meets her childhood crush and instead of thinking I already killed my boyfriend, I should stay away from this guy or who else knows what would happen?, Mallory basically drools over her childhood crush, thinking how hot he’s grown and if they would have any chance together. (Just so you know, I also skipped a major part of her “romance” because you won’t find out about this until 75% of the book. But just so you know, the part I forced myself to not tell you about drove me nuts.) Please Mallory, calm down. I can smell your hormones from a mile away. Not to mention, you should see all the rants I had about her in my notebook.

Mallory also might seriously be a psychopath. She has this obsession with knives (as demonstrated by the first sentence) and after another terribly tragic event happened to her, the very next day Mallory was making out with a new guy in public. I wanted to high-five Mallory’s mother when her mother basically yelled at Mallory asking if something was deeply wrong with her. I agree Mallory’s mother, something definitely is wrong with Mallory.

The whole mystery and horror component of Hysteria is namely non-existent. Why? Well, there are two reasons: the writing was bland and you couldn’t connect with any of the characters. Well, maybe except for Mallory’s mother since she was the only sane one in the entire book. It’s hard to feel scared for any of the characters when you didn’t connect with them and maybe (okay, definitely) hate them.

Last, but not least, Hysteria left me with a major plot hole.

However, there is only one good thing about Hysteria as a fellow blogger pointed out, Hysteria made me absolutely hysterical over the book. I can’t stand Mallory.

Overall, bottom line, skip this book. It would drive you absolutely crazy with hate and boredom. Hysteria will make you rant, pull out your hair, and make you want to throw the book against the wall in frustration. Next time I’m reading a book Megan Miranda wrote, I’m going to be very, very careful.