With Malice

And excellent modern horror story.I’m glad I read this book but I wouldn’t read it a second time. It’s a page-turner, and the title gives you a good clue as to why – the characters, all of them, are subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) malicious so the page turning is about disgust and the gloating need for more disgust. Although it has an American apple-pie happy-ever-after ending, in fact the ending is even more horrible than the rest of the book.Cook is, I think, extremely insightful about her fellow Americans, and cleverly honest about why they are how they are. For me, the one sentence in the book that drives this home is “… my dad huffing and puffing about how he insisted on the top tier of care.” That will likely seem normal and innocuous to most Americans, to us in Europe and especially Britain it does not. It’s unthinkable to us that anyone would not be given the best care possible because they couldn’t pay for it! But the USA seems to run on money, money as kudos as comes over in the story very well, money as power, money as the most necessary thing to have, and it seems the USA cannot conceive of any human beings who don’t run on this. This, in its turn, shows us why the USA fail to understand how anyone else outside their borders lives and thinks. I find that both horrifying and terrifying, With Malice shows it very well.The book also shows the innate American naivety which this fixation that money is the root of all good brings about, and the selfishness. I’m not quite certain if Cook intends this or, perhaps, how far she intends it, that may be because this is the first book of hers that I’ve read so I don’t know her very well at all.The story is based around the story of how Amanda Knox was accused and convicted of the murder, in 2007, of her British friend and roommate Meredith Kercher. In the story the two girls are both American but come from different class-structures, the heroine, Jilly, being rich and intellectual while the victim, Simone, is poor and pretty and good with getting people to like her. For me, this is quite stereotyped but I’m willing to believe it may be true and real-life in the States. Like in the real Amanda Knox event, Cook’s heroine, Jilly, is said to have killed her friend over a boyfriend. Eventually, come the end of the story, the authorities think it was the boyfriend whodunit as happened in the Knox event, although the man doesn’t seem to go to prison. The heroine is well drawn, I think, though I don’t know any American teenage girls it feels right, and so are the other characters, friends, parents, lawyers, etc, with the exception of the Italian boyfriend who seems very two-dimensional. Having had Italian boyfriends myself I’d suggest Cook tries one as they’re far more 3D than she’s drawn here.I didn’t find myself liking any of the characters, I would never want to meet any of them and this makes the book something of a hard read. It also made me skip lots of times and search for the pieces of information I wanted rather than read it consecutively as I do with books I’m enjoying. It’s that malice again. I was hooked, drawn by the malice because of disgust and dislike, wanting to know whodunit because I disliked the characters.So why, after all that rather negative stuff, do I say I’m glad I read the book? Because, unfortunately, I think it’s a very good portrait of America. For me, it makes a lot of sense as to why so many people voted for Trump. It includes a massive ignorance of anywhere else in the world; for instance, one teenage friend says, “I don’t think they have 911 in Italy…” Pardon? That’s staggering, that a supposedly well-educated 18-year-old American girl doesn’t know that Italy is a modern civilised country, far more so in many ways than the USA. But perhaps that’s why. Perhaps Americans cannot bear to believe that anywhere is better than they are. Hence my feeling about Trump, folk who think like that would indeed be so dumb as to inflict Trump on the rest of the world. I also have a sneaking suspicion that this teenager would attempt to dial 911 here in Britain, never having even conceived that our ways could possibly be different, and she might need to learn them. I’ve had several driving experiences, with American friends at the wheel over here, where they did what was natural to them at home and damn near caused accidents. And then their excuse was, proudly, that’s what they’d do at home! That, too, is horrifying.So, With Malice, is worth a read as an eyeopener (should you need one) into how America works. But, like I said, it’s not a book I’d read a second time. For me, it’s a horror story, subtle and ubiquitous because you may never know when you’re actually with people like this, and so even more horror.

With Malice is a fast-paced YA thriller about two high school best friends about to start the next chapter in their lives. Jill wakes up in a hospital bed unable to remember the last six weeks of her life. Not even the trip of a lifetime to Italy she had planned. Not that her best friend Simone is dead and especially not that she is the one that is accused of killing her."One of the most primal survival instincts the brain has is finding pattern and assigning meaning" With Malice was exactly what I was looking for at the time and got me out of my reading slump in the most enjoyable way possible. What I loved most about this book is the fact that you are taken on a journey with Jill, finding out the same time as her, exactly what happened six weeks ago in Italy.

I loved this story. Due to Jill having amnesia, we cannot be sure if any memories she uncovers are real, and equally we can't be sure other accounts of what happens are correct, therefore I was kept guessing all the way through and did not know who or what to believe. I was intrigued right up to the end and I liked that it was not what I was expecting. I am far from a "young adult" and I still thought this was great, so give it a try even if you are older than the target audience!

Bought this after it was recommended on a blog. Should really have done a bit more research. It's total teen fiction. I imagine I would have found it slightly more edgy and riveting had I still been 15. Very average. Might be fine as a light hearted holiday read. However I've read a few 'young adult' novels which far surpass this in terms of quality.

the ending is so disappointing, so much anticipation and no answer is given.

very Amanda Knox. An interesting read and liked most of it but the ending felt a little rushed. Good read but didn't really round off with answers.

Very Very slow book and did not connect with characters so not a book I would read again

Few surprises but Eileen Cook certainly paints a good picture and ultimately keeps you interested until the end of the book.