The Hysterical Girls of St. Bernadett..., Hanna Alkaf
The Hysterical Girls of St. Bernadett..., Hanna Alkaf
List: $25.99 | Sale: $18.20
Club: $12.99

The Hysterical Girls of St. Bernadette's

Author: Hanna Alkaf

Narrator: Samantha Tan, Mirai

Unabridged: 10 hr 5 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/24/2024


Synopsis

Three starred reviews!

An all-girls school is struck with mysterious cases of screaming hysteria in this “gripping, perceptive” (Booklist, starred review) dark academia young adult thriller haunted by a deeply buried history clawing to the light.

For over a hundred years, girls have fought to attend St. Bernadette’s, with its reputation for shaping only the best and brightest young women.

Unfortunately, there is also the screaming.

When a student begins to scream in the middle of class, a chain reaction starts that impacts the entire school. By the end of the day, seventeen girls are affected—along with St. Bernadette’s stellar reputation.

Khadijah’s got her own scars to tend to, and watching her friends succumb to hysteria only rips apart wounds she’d rather keep closed. But when her sister falls to the screams, Khad knows she’s the only one who can save her.

Rachel has always been far too occupied trying to reconcile her overbearing mother’s expectations with her own secret ambitions to pay attention to school antics. But just as Rachel finds her voice, it turns into screams.

Together, the two girls find themselves digging deeper into the school’s dark history, hunting for the truth. Little do they know that a specter lurks in the darkness, watching, waiting, and hungry for its next victim…

About Hanna Alkaf

Hanna Alkaf is the author of The Weight of Our SkyQueen of the TilesThe Girl and the GhostHamra and the Jungle of Memories, and The Hysterical Girls of St. Bernadette’s, as well as coeditor of the young adult anthology The Grimoire of Grave Fates. She graduated with a degree in journalism from Northwestern University and has spent most of her life working with words, both in fiction and nonfiction. She lives in Kuala Lumpur with her family.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Emma Ann on June 27, 2024

Students at a Malaysian boarding school are struck by a mysterious screaming illness. Is it mass hysteria, a haunting, or something else? The book explores trauma, bodily autonomy, and sisterhood. This is my first Hanna Alkaf book, but I can tell it’s not her first YA novel. She writes her character......more

Goodreads review by Ashley on December 18, 2024

2.5 I would have DNFed but I wanted to figure out the sweeping and if it was a metaphor. Kinda but not really......more

Goodreads review by Wen-yi on November 02, 2024

My favourite Hanna Alkaf yet - absolutely haunting and brilliantly embedded in oppressive, violent silence, and the way teen girls' voices and bodies are tamped down into palpable rage. This was so aggressively written for me, from the local elite girls' mission school to the type A chinese girl top......more

Goodreads review by Kara&Nanouknoons❤️ on January 02, 2025

So glad I chose to listen to this instead of reading the physical book. It's not that it was bad, it just probably wouldn't have kept my attention otherwise. The narration was amazing and immersive, and the story wasn't too bad either. It definitely picked up more during the second half of the book......more

Goodreads review by Afi on October 20, 2024

Loads to say but the second half was a bit of a downer. The story started of so-so good. RTC.......more