With Malice

Received from the publisher via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Cover image and summary from Goodreads:

Eighteen-year-old Jill Charron wakes up in a hospital room, leg in a cast, stitches in her face and a big blank canvas where the last six weeks should be. She discovers she was involved in a fatal car accident while on a school trip in Italy. A trip she doesn’t even remember taking. 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.

As the accident makes national headlines, Jill finds herself at the center of a murder investigation. It doesn’t help that the media is portraying her as a sociopath who killed her bubbly best friend, Simone, in a jealous rage. With the evidence mounting against her, there’s only one thing Jill knows for sure: She would never hurt Simone. But what really happened? Questioning who she can trust and what she’s capable of, Jill desperately tries to piece together the events of the past six weeks before she loses her thin hold on her once-perfect life.

I love a good mystery, and this book had some buzz that definitely had me wanting to check this out. Slight spoilers ahead.

I was hoping for a twistier story than I got, and I really wish that Jill had regained her memories. It was definitely intriguing to have the contrast of Jill’s memories of her friendship with Simone, and the things people were saying about her and Simone on the trip leading up to the crash that killed Simone, but the story wasn’t as much of a thriller or mystery as I had hoped it would be.

However, I really liked Eileen Cook’s writing, and the way the story jumped around from Jill in the hospital and rehab to fragments of memories and transcripts of TV and police interviews, message boards online, and e-mails and text messages. With Malice was a page-turner, and a fun way to pass the time.