Hysteria was one of those books I picked up at a local booksale, placed on my shelf, and proceeded to gloss over for the next year or so. And yet, at a time when I was trying to downsize my shelves (and gave away a lot of my unread books) I kept it. Mostly because of the plot synopsis. You get a lot of things in young adult, but not a lot of them involve murder. Specifically, the main character murdering someone. This is an established fact from the beginning of the novel. Mallory's boyfriend Brian is dead, and it's her fault. There's no racing to clear her name or finding some way to escape jail. That's already happened (the not going to jail part, at least). It's been ruled... a "justifiable" homicide (or something along those lines), because Brian broke into her home and she was defending herself. Hysteria is the focus of what happens in the weeks and months after Brian was killed, and Mallory is the town pariah. Her parents are afraid of her, Brian's mother is stalking her, and no one looks at her the same way. So she's sent to the boarding school her father attended, and tries to start over anew. 
 This is what I actually enjoyed about the novel: Mallory's trauma. It felt... real. Granted, I don't have any experience in this type of trauma, or any for that matter. But Mallory is haunted by Brain's death. She sees him. Hears his heart beating as she tries to fall asleep. Dreams of killing him over and over and over every night in her sleep. At the beginning of the novel, little cracks appear, and as the story goes on Mallory slowly begins to fall apart. And, it doesn't help that someone at her new school knows her secret, and makes it a point to let Mallory know that they can get into her room, slash up her clothes, and people will still blame Mallory. Or, is everyone else right, and Mallory really is losing her grip on reality? 
 There's a lot of twisty relationships, backstabbing, and secrets, everything you'd expect of a prep school novel. But there's real heart to it too. And I really enjoyed reading it.