BOOK REVIEW: With Malice by Eileen Cook

I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

Eighteen-year-old Jill Charron's senior trip to Italy was supposed to be the adventure of a lifetime. And then the accident happened. Waking up in a hospital room, her leg in a cast, stitches in her face, and a big blank canvas where the last 6 weeks should be, Jill comes to discover she was involved in a fatal accident in her travels abroad. She was jetted home by her affluent father in order to receive quality care. Care that includes a lawyer. And a press team. Because maybe the accident...wasn't an accident. Wondering not just what happened but what she did, Jill tries to piece together the events of the past six weeks before she loses her thin hold on her once-perfect life.

First of all, I am getting tired of all the book comparisons. Every time there is an unreliable narrator, people compare to We Were Liars or The Girl on the Train. It's annoying. 

Okay, so let's get to it. Jill and Simone have been best friends since they were in fourth grade. They were as close as two girls could be and they considered themselves sisters. So when Jill wakes up in a hospital and she is told there was a car accident that killed Simone, she is understandably shaken up. Even more upsetting is that people seem to think Jill crashed the car on purpose.

Honestly, I think the worst part of Jill's memory loss was that she lost six weeks in ITALY. Seriously, ITALY IS AMAZING! It sucks that she didn't even remember being there. But in all seriousness, Jill knows she could never hurt Simone. Or could she? There are a lot of things that don't add up, like witnesses who say they were fighting over a boy that Jill doesn't even remember. And all of the people online don't make it any better. They are convinced they know Jill from pictures and because Jill has money and is shy, she must be a stuck up bitch. Jill is a total unreliable narrator because she has no memory of anything. When he sees a few flashes, she isn't even sure they are real. This definitely made me think about crimes in the news and how most people (me included) seem to think they have all the facts just because they have all the tidbits from the news. That isn't even close to being the case.

An interesting part of the book was the way the author told the story of what happened in Italy. She didn't really show flashbacks; instead we saw emails and police interviews and eyewitness testimony and even some of the online blog posts. None of it can really be considered reliable because it seems like everyone has a motive to lie. And of course, there are always three sides to every story so I wasn't even sure whether I should trust the eyewitness stuff.

This book was so fast paced and thrilling and I could really feel Jill's struggle with trying to come to terms with what happened in Italy. The psychologist was one of my favorite characters because she really seemed to care about Jill and understand what she was feeling. Friendships between girls can be complicated, especially when you're in high school and the emotions are ramped up by 1000. I did NOT like Jill's father or her lawyer. Jill was eighteen, but they treated her like she was a child. They kept going behind her back to help the case and they never really kept her in the loop. I get that her dad was paying for the defense, but they should have told Jill more than what they did. 

The main complain I have about this book was the ending. There was so much buildup and I think the book comparisons didn't help. I was thinking that the ending would be a lot more shocking than it was. Honestly, I saw part of it coming but there was still a "why" component missing. The ending also seemed just a bit rushed to me.

Other than a few issues though, I really enjoyed this book and read it in one sitting. There was so much suspense and I just wanted to see how everything would turn out.

Buy/Borrow/Skip: Buy this one!