Waiting to be Heard: A Review

I try not to review every book that I read, but when I read a good one, I feel that it should be discussed.  I recently finished the Amanda Knox book, Waiting to be Heard.  For those who don't know, Amanda Knox was an American university exchange student in Perugia Italy.  She was living in a house in Perugia with 2 Italian roommates and a British roommate, Meredith Kercher.  About six weeks in, Meredith was murdered and Amanda and her boyfriend of about a week, Raffaele were arrested and charged with the murder.

She was convicted of this murder, but after about four years in jail, their conviction was overturned on appeal due to errors that the police and prosecution had made with evidence.  She is currently back in the States, but Italy is retrying the case again.  There was a third party, Rudy Guede, who is currently in jail for the murder.  His DNA was actually found.  This book is her memoir up until the time when she returned home to the States.

The book was very well written.  I'm not sure whether she had help writing it, but she was interested in becoming a writer, so it may have been all her.  Of course, a memoir like this is biased.  She could have lied through the whole book, but personally, I do believe that she is innocent.  The Italian police made huge errors in the case and it really seemed that they had decided she was guilty due to her early reactions and so they tried to come up with evidence that would prove this.  It's kind of scary to think that doing the wrong thing, or not having an adequate alibi because you were at your boyfriend's house watching a movie, could cause you to go to prison for 25 years.  I'm sure that she left for Italy a young naive girl and came back to America a completely different person.

Criticized for smiling in the court room, she said she was briefly smiling at her Family who had travelled to Italy to support her. {via}

I will admit that some of her behaviour following the murder was strange, but who are we to judge how someone reacts when one of their roommates were just murdered?  Personally, I have never experienced this, so I'm not sure what I would do. 

I would definitely recommend this book.  It kept me interested throughout.  She went into detail about conversations, her interrogation, her time in jail and the trial.  I would also like to read another book about the case written by someone external to it for comparison, to see whether my opinion stays the same.  If you are interested in this case, or true crime books at all, you should read this book.



{via}