With Malice by Eileen Cook (review)

Two best friends—financially privileged and academically driven Jill, and poor yet popular and outgoing Simone—take the trip of a lifetime to Italy their senior year, only to have it end in a horrific car crash. Jill awakens in a hospital with intermittent aphasia and no memory of the past six weeks only to find that Simone is dead and that she might be legally responsible. As the story unfolds, even she doubts her innocence, especially when she learns that she was uncharacteristically involved with, and lost her virginity to, their Italian tour guide, an older guy who she and Simone allegedly fought over during the trip. When an autopsy reveals that Simone was stabbed prior to the crash and a knife is found with Jill’s fingerprints, the question becomes one of motive, and one is supplied by Jill’s bracingly honest roommate in rehab, making the final story, revealed in a dream that may or may not be true given Jill’s retrograde amnesia, nicely ambivalent. Interspersed throughout the main narrative are transcripts from police statements, emails, and blog posts, ensuring that the whole package takes on a ripped-from-the-headlines feel (it will immediately raise thoughts of the Amanda Knox case) and causing readers to consider how all these bits and pieces call into question any coherent narrative. Jill’s condition makes her a cipher even to herself, which is disconcerting but also credible; under the influence of an unfamiliar environment, resentment in a friendship, and first infatuation, smart girls are perfectly capable of making stupid choices.