I’ve loved Rebecca Wait’s previous novels so was looking forward to reading Havoc, It’s set at a girl’s boarding school on the south coast in the 1980s, where 16 year old Ida Campbell arrives after leaving Scotland following a family scandal. Following the mysterious illness of a pupil, one by one other girls become affected by strange symptoms that are rumoured to be caused by poison.
This was a hugely original novel , thoughtful and funny and I adored the character of Ida. I loved the 1980s setting , the Today programme is broadcast to the girls daily and we hear of the attempted assassination of Thatcher and the fear of nuclear war. The teachers are interesting characters and I was rooting for Eleanor, the Geography teacher throughout.
Havoc reminded me of the writing of Clare Chambers and I would highly recommend it and look forward to the author’s next novel.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this digital ARC.

Was excited to read this follow up as I love Rebecca Wait's debut. Devoured this in two days, this was a really humorous, unusual read. Loved the characters, setting and style. However, everything was wrapped up a little too neatly for me to give it 4 stars but I would recommend as a great holiday read. Light but with a bit of substance.

Havoc by Rebecca Wait sees 16-year-old Ida Campbell flee Scotland to attend a failing girls boarding school on the south coast of England in the 1980s. However, a mysterious illness causes several pupils to develop seizures with mass hysteria sweeping through the school. The campus setting combined with manipulative teenage girls and the background threat of nuclear holocaust is appropriately claustrophobic for the type of dark humour and psychological dysfunction Wait depicted so brilliantly in I’m Sorry You Feel That Way and Our Fathers. Overall, Havoc is more eccentric in tone compared to Wait’s previous novels. There are a few too many diversions to the inner lives of minor characters, but the farcical elements of the plot such as the school play are very funny and well done. Many thanks to Quercus Books for sending me a review copy via NetGalley.

Set in a girls'school, this book has "interesting" characters. . Having attended an all girls school, I recognised some of the elements in this school, the cliques & friendships , the outsiders and rumours and the teachers. This does seem too old fashioned for the 80s though that is acknowledged in the book . I enjoyed the writing style at first, the energy and getting to know the main characters but I started to get a little bogged down by the complicated plot lines and kept reading to find out what happened .... unfortunately not all the loose ends were resolved .
So now I have finished and still scratching my head wondering what the book was about.
Thanks to Net galley for the ARC,

Firstly Havoc is such an apt title for this book because that sums it up perfectly. This was such a fun entertaining read. It was so witty and amusing in parts . We follow an array of characters in a girls boarding school in the 1980s . The teachers mainly female try to control the girls especially Miss Christie who has strange techniques to say the least. Eleanor is my favourite, she forms a relationship with the only male teacher and is an interesting character. Then we have the girls , such fun characters , the relationships and secrets between them , and the mischief they get up to had me chuckling. The focus of the story is when one of the girls becomes seriously ill and other girls start to get symptoms, there’s a strange malady going on . We then get correspondence between the doctors trying to figure out what is going on.,without much success'. . All in all this was an enjoyable funny read which I totally immersed myself in .

I absolutely adored this novel, very different from I'm Sorry You Feel That Way but with the same richness of writing, particularly in the relationships between the characters. It's laugh out loud funny in parts and also made me sob - it's exceptionally good at conjuring the atmosphere of a slightly anachronistic girls' school too, based on my experience! Highly recommended and many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Havoc was a quirky read with wonderful and often weird characters, many of whom were quite relateable. I found the doctor's faxes to be somewhat unnecessary but the rest of the plot I really enjoyed. I am the type of person who rarely laughs out loud but the description of the school play had me crying with laughter.
I have never come across Rebecca Wait before but I will certainly keep an eye out for her other works in future.

I absolutley loved Havoc by Rebecca Wait - so much so that I immediately went out and bought one of her previous books to read next! This was the perfect mixture of mystery, humour and warmth. I enjoyed the three narrators equally, which is a real rarity, and couldn't wait to see where the story would take them.

Whilst I liked this I‘m *really* disappointed to say I didn‘t love it. I usually adore campus novels and, with such high expectations for this author, this just fell a bit short.

There were too many characters with at least one unnecessary storyline, meaning there wasn‘t the emotional heft of previous books.

It felt too matter-of-fact, with a lot of the book taken up with faxes between medical professionals which, while interesting, also detracted from the emotional side of the book. There also wasn‘t enough exploration of the MC and her supposed ‘difficult‘ new roommate.

3.5 stars rounded up to 4

This took me back to my schooldays reading mallory towers, the 4 Mary's, watching St trinians. It is laugh out loud funny and having gone to an all girls school the mass hysteria and effect of male teachers is all too accurate.

While I absolutely loved Rebecca Wait’s last book, Havoc felt (appropriately enough, given the title) like a novel with too many ideas. While each of them taken individually - the nuclear-holocaust-obsessed boarding school with quirky governors; the strange sickness spreading amongst the girls; Ida’s backstory; Eleanor’s backstory; the neurologist’s letters to a London expert (oh, and his inevitable backstory); Louise’s attempts to be expelled - was compelling and just the right side of weird, but the total sum of so many stories and backstories was overwhelming.

A quirk read, based in an English boarding school in England in the 80's (not quite Mallory Towers :) ) Some very interesting characters and I enjoyed the twists and turns in the story. Good vacation read. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance copy.

Ida finds herself at a remote boarding school that is decidedly odd. Why she's there is something of a mystery, as is the reason behind weird spasm shown by various girls. Something is up at this school and through perspectives from the girls and faculty, Havoc slowly reveals a fascinating story. Thanks to riverrun and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Our grip on reality is more fragile than we'd like to accept. When I went through a phase of reading a lot about schizophrenia, I came to appreciate how tenuous our understanding of the world and ourselves is. We don't necessarily understand the brain and all its capable of that well, nor necessarily how it affects our bodies and our perception. Usually, we don't have to think about this too much nor worry too much about whether anything might set us off. But if your right arm were to suddenly start twitching and spasming, that would be concerning, wouldn't it. Especially if the person sitting next to you is developing the same symptom. Are you both being poisoned, perhaps? Are you going mad? Narratives around what is usually considered mass hysteria, or mass psychogenic illness, can sometimes fall on the wrong side of a blurry line, where they go for easy answers. In Havoc, Rebecca Wait takes a situation ripe for exploitation, a messy girls' boarding school, and turns it into a story that shows not just gentleness towards its characters but also a desire to understand what is behind events such as psychogenic illness or conversion disorder.

Ida arrives at St. Anne's not so much because she really wants to be there, but because she no longer wants to be at home. We're not immediately told why, but as we get to see St. Anne's through her eyes it becomes very clear that this school is odd, extremely so. Are there ghost? Do some of the buildings seem to trap its inhabitants? Did Ida's roommate throw a previously roommate out of a window? And are the nuclear fire drills really necessary? All of that is strange enough, but when one student begins to develop odd spasms, which then spread to her classmates, everything becomes decidedly weirder. Havoc is told largely through Ida's perspective, but it is enriched with chapters from Eleanor's perspective, a teacher at the school, and letters from a local medical resident to his former colleague, trying to figure out what is happening at the school. Out of these three stories, Wait braids together a narrative about belonging, love, isolation, and both the strength and fragility of our minds. I think I enjoyed Ida's storyline the most, because of the development we see in her and the way Wait continued to surprise me with her. The doctor's storyline however, entirely told through letters, was also really touching.

One thing I really enjoyed about Havoc was how Rebecca Wait captured the insanity that is being a teenage girl surrounded by other teenage girls. I went to a mixed high school, but nonetheless got some experience of the intensity of that time. It is not all bad though. Within that intensity, deep bonds can develop and you can be encouraged to become more truthful about who you really are. It can also make you do silly things though. That mix, at once so genuine and high on hormones, is difficult to capture without somehow making fun of it, but Wait manages it. There are legitimately funny moments in Havoc, which are just so out of left field that you can't help but laugh. Wait has a knack, I think, for characterisation that works itself out largely through showing. We get to know Ida through her actions and then, occasionally, when she reveals herself through speech, we get to reconsider what we know about her. I really enjoy getting to work at it in this way and there are major pay-offs to it throughout Havoc. I'm definitely going to look around for more by Wait!

Havoc is a great book, full of well-earned twists and turns, told in intriguing ways. It is a book about girlhood, about the pressures of family and the world, but also about the unhinged chaos of teenagehood.

I was a big fan of girls boarding school stories as a preteen so I was intrigued by this one Set in the 80s in a south coast fading dilapidated girls boarding school
The story follows a new girl at the school he gradually becomes aware that things are not quite right amongst her fellow students. One by one the girls start to behave strangely some fitting some fainting and some are having abnormal body movements. As things escalate the board of health is called in to investigate as several children are hospitalised
The story then follows quite an amusing, “who done it “with lots of potential culprits have the girls been poisoned is it something in the water? Is it mass hysteria? What are the significance of hidden poison in the attic and the wardrobe?

There’s also a selection of teachers who might might not be involved the disgraced male teacher who arrives halfway through term with his past employment history under suspicion, the reclusive teacher who doesn’t fit in with the other others we meet them one by one
Ultimately, I enjoyed the start of this novel more than the end. It was more fun when all the options were open and we didn’t really know what was causing the problems. I found the way the novel was concluded less enjoyable.
The author has a clear easily read writing style writing in a witty style The book was an easy read.
I read a copy of the novel on NetGalley UK in return for an unbiased review the book was published in the UK on the 3rd of July 2025 by Quercus books.
This review will appear on NetGalley UK, Goodreads, StoryGraph, and my book blog bionicSarahSbooks.wordpress.com
It will also appear on Amazon and waterstones

This was brilliant! My first book by this author but won’t be last. Funny at times but also deeply moving and sad, and dark. Set in 80s in England. Highly recommend.

this was . . . just all right, i suppose. it was partly my fault because i thought it’d be more on the literary side, but it was just your average campus thriller. some of the characters were a little silly, but it was still quite fun in parts.

This is a darkly funny, emotionally layered mystery that blends satire, suspense, mystery and psychological depth with a coming of age story.

I must admit that I didn’t realise quite how like a St Trinians novel this new book from Rebecca Wait would be. If I had I might not have chosen to read it.. I. Glad i did though as it was highly entertaining and made me laugh out loud in parts. Just what I needed.

What a hilarious book! It really took me by surprise - I cried with laughter on a bus, sent specific lines to my friends, and have already recommended it to multiple people. The humour is subtle and dark and I really loved it. I especially liked the Ida POV chapters - the girls all had such distinct personalities and were all so weird and believable as teenagers, which is so rarely done well. The relationship between Eleanor and Matthew was less of a success for me - it seemed to happen quite fast and I didn't really pick up on the chemistry between them, which is the only reason this wasn't a 5* for me. That said, I had the best time with this book. One of my favourite reads in months.

Dark, mordant, sparkling 1980’s boarding school with a wonderful cast of misfits

Oh this was utterly glorious, moving, enthralling and witty. I am so cross I have finished it, even though the ending was satisfying and excellent. Spat out back in 2025, forced to leave the company of Ida, Louise, Elinor, Doctor Halliwell, nuclear Armageddon obsessed Miss Christie and all I’m slumped and disconsolate.

Wait’s tale of a very substandard fee paying girls’ boarding school whose nearest geographical neighbour is Roedean (which St Anne’s is patently NOT) reminds the reader of several other, wonderfully written, equally quirky tales of fervid adolescence. Such as The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, shades of Shirley Jackson, Oh Caledonia. This is mainly a school, where it seems, parents want to get rid of their annoying daughters, don’t care too much about standards, but do like the cachet of private education for their troublesome little angels or demons.

Ida, 16, living in a small island community off the coast of Scotland, with her depressed mother and cross, stroppy younger sister, is bullied and despised, through being tarred by her mothers’ shameful past. We will discover what this is, later. Ida, who is quiet, and generally eager to please, secretly applies to a whole raft of boarding schools for scholarships as far away as possible. St Anne’s accept her with more than open arms, and things are clearly far from conventional right from the start.

Ida is roomed with Louise, a girl with a history of some violence, desperate to be expelled – hence her increasingly antisocial behaviour.

Elinor is the geography teacher, who seems to be an archetypical spinster, disappointed and ashamed after a failed love affair. She too has been room paired with a bossier, stroppier person, the classics teacher Vera

A mysterious malady – or possibly several – strikes down one pupil after after another. Foul play of some kind, or at least some profound indication of unhygienic or environmental malpractice is suspected, bringing in investigations by the police, local medical officers, journalists, governors and parliamentarians.

Matters medical and investigative are handled by the one way correspondence of neurological consultant James Halliwell a caring, suffer fools not at all gladly, witty delight, desperately trying to get outside clarification and guidance from a former colleague.

Although the subject matter is often quite dark, the light touch – and wonderful WIT is a sheer delight. Though this is scattered throughout there are a couple of extended standouts, one, the Open Day and the performance of a complex dramatic piece, which doesn’t exactly go smoothly, and the other the minutes of a complex meeting between various administrative chiefs, trying to disentangle all matters medical

Though bereft to have finished this, highly recommend read, I have gratefully discovered Wait is NOT a debut novelist and there is a back catalogue to explore.