With Malice – Eileen Cook

Title: With Malice by Eileen Cook
Publishing Info: June 7, 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Source: ALAMW16, Edelweiss
Genres: Young Adult, Mystery/Thriller
Find it on the web: Buy from Amazon // GoodreadsDate Completed: February 11, 2016

For fans of We Were Liars and The Girl on the Train comes a chilling, addictive, compulsive read about a teenage girl who wakes up in a hospital bed and cannot remember the last six weeks of her life, including the accident that killed her best friend--only what if the accident wasn't an accident?
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 6 weeks should be. She comes to discover she was involved in a fatal accident while on a school trip in Italy three days previous but 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.

Line up here, mystery and thriller fans — you won’t want to miss WITH MALICE! I’ve always loved mystery/thrillers and any book that can surprise me, get that adrenaline going, or keep me on the edge of my seat. So far 2016 seems to hold so many young adult titles like these and I’m trying to gobble up every single one! It’s been a while since I’ve been so hooked and particularly invested in a thriller and I have a feeling that WITH MALICE will be one of those special books that holds readers and sucks them in!

Right off the bat, the reader is hit with an unreliable narrator. After a terrible accident, Jill wakes up in the hospital with no recollection of what happened so the reader really has no idea what happened either — and trust me, even though this review just presented you with the synopsis, don’t read it right before you read the book. I hadn’t read it since I added the book to Goodreads and I got hit with a few surprises that are in the synopsis that I didn’t remember. It really started the book off with a bang! The whole book was so exciting and it was interesting to try to fit the pieces together of what happened to Jill. Since Jill is the main character, obviously you want to root for her and help her prove her innocence and that the accident was not her fault but the question that remains from the police, the hospital staff, and even Jill’s parents and friends is: Is Jill really to blame? No one really knows exactly what happened and Jill has to piece the puzzle back together and hope she gets some memories back to try to find an answer.

I loved the slow reveal of clues, facts, and reports. Jill really has to dig for some things that no one else can answer since she was one of the only people involved in/on the scene of the accident. Along the way, she has to deal with lawyers, reporters, and even family that doesn’t quite trust her. As the evidence slow starts pouring in, Jill has to come to some hard realizations about herself and how she’s treated other recently as well as if that means that she really is guilty.

I don’t really want to say too much about the book because it’s really best to experience. I was honestly hooked from start to finish and I ended up finishing it in a single day! (Thank goodness our internet was down that day, huh?) WITH MALICE definitely had a DANGEROUS GIRLS feel in a lot of ways and although they were similar in content, the book was unique enough that I never really knew where it was going to go. I mean, with any book like this, who can really say what will happen in the end! I really enjoyed the ending as well and I think readers are going to love this one!

“The View from Goodreads” is a featured section in my reviews that I decided to incorporate! I tend to update my Goodreads status a LOT when I read — reactions, feelings, notes — so I thought it would be fun to share the sort of “reading process”! All status updates are spoiler-free (no specific plot points will be revealed) but will contain reactions to certain pages and/or characters!

Jill // Character Obsessions: Memories, healing, friends, secrets 
I loved having an unreliable narrator like Jill. I was so on the edge of my seat to see if something insane happened or it was just a horrible mistake. I really felt for Jill in a lot of ways but I was always still so dang suspicious of her!

Kept Me Hooked On: Dangerous Girls read-alikes. I am obsessed with DANGEROUS GIRLS and I will take all the read-alikes I can get!
Left Me Wanting More: Conclusion. The ending happened a little quickly and I could have used a couple more sentences/paragraphs to really wrap things up but it was still quite interesting!

Addiction Rating
Read it!

I really enjoyed this one and I think if you’re a fan of thrillers, it’s a must-read!

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(Click the cover to see my review!)