I really enjoyed this book. It was quick, thrilling, and I read it in only a few hours. My intentions were only to read a chapter...you see how that turned out. The story was plot-driven and had plenty of twists. If you typically enjoy YA thrillers, you don’t want to miss out!

Enjoyable story of a young girl waking in the hospital from a vehicle accident. Her best friend is dead and Jil cannot remember what happened... did she kill her friend?

With Malice is one if those novels you finish reading and ask yourself, “What the heck just happened?” Jill was excited to be going to Italy for the summer and then her best friend Simone decided to go as well. The novel begins with Jill regaining consciousness and finding out Simone is dead. All Jill’s memories of Italy have vanished. Even her memories of the handsome Italian college student Nico. Jill begins the fight for her life in more than one way. This is a great YA novel.

You have to love a decent YA mystery book. This wasn’t as shocking to me as We We’re Liars (which it is compared to) but it definitely had its twists and turns as the MC Figured our what happened to her.

This book was such a mixed bag for me. On one hand, I couldn't put it down. I had to find out what happened on Jill's trip with her best friend Simone. I liked that we are given hints to what had transpired in fragments due to Jill's memory loss. There was such a buildup that I expected a big twist to come. But then it ended and I was like, "that's it?" I've read books with open endings before but this one just made no sense whatsoever. There was way too many loose ends. And plus one of the big "reveals" I felt was too obvious from the get go. This was probably a 3 star book at most, but I rounded up because I did find the aspects of about the ways media can change the narrative in legal cases.

Review posted on Amazon and Goodreads

Oh my gosh a psychological thriller in the vein of We Were Liars. Jill wakes up with memory loss and a broken leg in Italy and slowly tries to piece together what's happened. She is an unreliable narrator which I found made to harder to put down as she'd have little revelations that would be discounted so you were constantly on your toes trying to figure out what had happened. I loved the inclusion of police transcripts, blog posts, and social media comments as they offered yet more perspectives on what was happening and why. As a fan of crime drama etc I thought I'd figure out the ending but it was full of twists and turns and I was shocked by the conclusion.

Moderately intriguing. I can't say that I found it particularly surprising or believable. There's an air of possibility but the actual presentation of events and characters was flat. I did like the questioning of perception and memory though.

Quick, thrilling, and fast-paced, which I did enjoy. Ultimately, though, I found the story was less psychological than I'd hoped.

I have featured this book in my talks with classes who come to the library and It is currently in high demand. I loved the book for its ability to make me believe in a character only to have that character completely fool me in the end.

This is a quick but enjoyable read, it was easy to devour and there were definitely some expected but also some unexpected twists. The book was well-paced, and Jill was a complicated main character. I'm definitely going to pick up thrillers by Cook in the future.

I liked With Malice, I did. While I was reading it, it was enjoyable. But in looking back to write this review, I found a lot of things that made me realize while I did enjoy it, this book was lacking in a lot of areas.

Coming off of reading another intense mystery/thriller, I couldn’t help but make comparisons in my head about how this was similar to said book, but fell short where the other soared.

The first issue I had with this one was the pacing of the story. It was slow. I guess this was understandable, considering that Jill was stuck either in the hospital or rehab for the entirety of the story, yet nothing particularly exciting happened. The few moments that I would classify as “exciting” were the moments that I predicted.

Brining me to my next qualm: predictability. This book tried really really hard to shock its reader! Maybe it’s because I read quite a bit of mysteries and thrillers, and just lots of YA in general. Either way, I wasn’t shocked. I did think to myself, “Hmm, that’s an interesting development” but never “Man, did I not see that coming!”

Third problem: Jill was one of the most boring main characters ever. I didn’t really care what happened to her because she lacked so much personality! She is set up to be an unreliable narrator who is dealing with amnesia as a result of the accident. Of course since she’s our main character we’re supposed to be rooting for her, and believing that she’s innocent and wrongly accused of the crime. To a point, I was, yet I knew something was up, as it almost always is with unreliable narrator situations.

The ending tried to shock the reader once again, but instead only left us confused and the story unresolved. The attempt to turn our expectations on their head was unsuccessful for me, actually leaving me a bit annoyed that I wasn’t given a proper ending.

Rereading this review, I totally sound like I hated this book, which isn’t the case. Sure, it had its issues, but I didn’t slam it down and call it a waste of my time. The premise was interesting, but the execution was lackluster.

This felt like reading a print version of a bad Lifetime movie.

My biggest complaints were the flat, stereotypical characters devoid of any real personality or life and the transcribed interrogations, blog posts, and TV show drama; it was jarring and really didn't add to the story and felt like a lame ploy to cover up the fact that the writing was sub-par at best.

Avoid it at all costs.

Oh my gods. Love this. The way Cook goes about telling this story is captivating. The reader is just as knowledgable as the main character, and learning things with her makes the reader feel like they are her. While the topic is obviously based on Knox, it didn't feel bland or old. A quick read whose ending will stick with me for a while.

I received a digital copy to review from Netgalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This is the story of Jill who goes to Italy and ends up in a car accident that almost killed her and loses her memory. I want to star by saying that I originally rated this book 3.5 stars but the more that I think about it, I can’t help but rate it two stars.

I have only read one thriller to compare this to but I would not even consider this a thriller. It wasn’t thrilling and I wasn’t on the edge of my seat or captivated by the plot. Though the concept was interesting, the book didn’t hold me in and have me on the edge of my seat like a thriller really should. The writing just wasn’t captivating. I knew from the first 50 pages what the ending was because of its predictability. It was pitched to have this huge plot twist and it just fell so flat for me. I was sucked in by the pure fact that I wanted to see if I was right on the ending and I was which was upsetting.

Overall the plot was not handed very well. We had multiple different elements including Jill’s memory, social media, the court case, and what really happened, and none of it was done well. I like to use the phrase “the book wasn’t baked, it was underdone” This was too true for this book. Because of how many elements were in here, none of them was “cooked” (developed) for than about 30% of what it should have been.

It was a disappointing read because of the true lack of experiencing Italy. It is mentioned throughout the book about various places they went but none of it was described in detail and the reasoning was due to Jill’s lack of memory. It still could have been shown from another point of view.

Overall I gave this 2 stars. I didn't hate this book but I found it extremely bland and disappointing. I wouldn't recommend anyone read this.

Four stars! Loved this book. Reviewing soon on my blog - just bought it in paperback as well!

This one was just ok for me. I figured out the end about half way through--so that makes the rest of the book a confirmation and lacks suspense. I liked the premise of the narrator being unreliable because of her head injury and the additional information (interviews and such) was neat because you had to put all the pieces together to solve the mystery. I think I liked Jill. She was a little spoiled and whiny for my taste--but I think that's the point of her character. Solid ok.