I did not really think it was a whole lot dark, seductive and sexy.
It was interesting, but missing something and i felt a little..bored some times.

Meet cool, calm and collected Pricilla (Cilla) Messing, a woman for whom her upcoming trip to Italy will hopefully be a brief break from a life that has gone into free-fall.

Cilla, 43, spends most of her time caring for her difficult mum. Following a plea from her brother-in-law Paul, an author, to oversee her rebellious teenage niece, Hannah who has become wayward and unruly she heads off to Rome. But rather than babysitting Hannah, Cilla feels that the time has come to let her hair down a little. So she throws herself into Hannah's impetuous world of dancing, smoking, and drinking, relishing the heady atmosphere of the Italian summer. After years of feeling burnt out and overlooked, Cilla gradually starts to think she has rediscovered life. But being so close to Hannah resurrects complicated memories, making Cilla restless and increasingly foolhardy...

In The Worst Kind of Want Liska Jacobs imagery was vivid and poetic and she created some interestingly complex, flawed characters. For me, Cilla's character was particularly well done - a woman confronting her ageing and her mother's decline, told in a manner in which I was able to relate. This was a nice slow-burning and engrossing novel and I'll be looking to read more by Liska Jacobs.

I received a complimentary digital copy of this novel, at my request, from Farrar, Straus and Giroux via NetGalley. This review is my own unbiased opinion.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. Thank you NetGalley.

What a book.
The Worst Kind of Want tells the story of a middle-age woman having an affair with a "barely legal" man while in Italy visiting a relative.
It's about desires, forbidden and not.

Thank you for the opportunity to read this book. A full review will be posted on Amazon and Goodreads

This novel is a riveting character study of Pricilla, also known as Cilla. At 43, she's childless, irresponsible, and restless, trapped in a vortex of past mistakes and current desires. Told from a first-person POV, the narrator continues to make dicey--often cringe-worthy--choices in life and romance. This emotional thriller is well plotted with alluring details of the protagonist's many crises of identity. She manages to turn an invitation to live in Italy into a string of epic mistakes. What kept me turning pages is Liska's lyrical language exploring Cilla's interior world. Recommended for readers who love an unsympathetic narrator looking for love in all the wrong places. Many themes for book group discussion including #MeToo power dynamics, family roles, moving forward--or inability to heal--from trauma.

A powerful novel about forbidden desires and secrets, The Worst Kind of Want tells the story of a woman caught up in a secret affair with a barely-of-age man when she visits her niece in Italy.
Not so much a gender reverse on Lolita, but rather what happens when someone has not been allowed to live life and has always been dedicated to taking care of someone else.

I definitely got Ottessa Moshfegh vibes from this book. It was captivating, immersive and a bit frightening. It's about a woman of a certain age and who hasn't thought about that not so distant future and what it might hold. However, some of the choices and thoughts of our protagonists are definitely not thoughts I've had before. These authors definitely stretch reality into uncomfortable spaces that force you to find empathy even when the character might not be likable.

Liska Jacobs is among one of the most talented writers of our generation. THE WORST KIND OF WANT was devastating in its beauty. A complicated exploration into sexuality, womanhood, and grief. I could not put it down. I still think about the moments Jacobs teased out: Donato and the pear, the train ride, the night spent with Guy, the Italian seaside. Jacobs is a master of language and story.

I should have loved this book. It is very well-written, skillfully plotted and structured – and it has the all-important personal tie-in: It is largely set in Puglia (along with Rome and Southern California), where I lived for several years. This wasn't the Puglia that I knew, however, and even nostalgia wasn’t enough to carry me over the top with this story.

When I began serious reading as a very young person in the 1960s, it frustrated me that so much of the highly-praised fiction on offer consisted of the sexual fantasies of privileged, middle-aged males. The protagonists often worked in academia. Autobiography much?

This book had all those hallmarks, only flipped to a female point of view. Cilla is a movie producer from a dysfunctional, film-industry family. She has been designated as the “responsible” family member – the standby through her screenwriter father’s death and her actress mother’s rapid decline.

At first the reader assumes that the title refers to Cilla’s unfulfilled desires and abusive relationship with a character from her youth. Another reference emerges later in the book.

The author treats every character with sympathy and dignity. Film director Guy is seemingly peripheral to the plot, and yet his influence permeates nearly every scene. Although author Liska Jacobs lets the reader arrive independently at this conclusion, Guy is a monstrous, manipulative person, and the reader assumes he has his own “Me, Too” moment waiting in the unspecified future.

In fact, most of the people we meet are out for their own gratification, with nothing much else to struggle against (and few of them struggle against their particular temptations, in any event. Self-indulgence is the norm.)

If you are looking for a book that delves into the complicated relationships between siblings (Cilla and her sister Hannah, in this case), you may not find a better example. However, if you yearn for books in which the characters lead less-than-charmed lives, and evolve and gain self-insight from the physical, financial, and moral challenges they face, this book may be a disappointment.

Thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Strauss and Giroux for an advance readers copy of this book.

Pricilla Messing has had it with being the responsible one. She's tired of caring for her elderly mother, especially after having to care for her father before his death. She always took a back seat to the relationship between her mother and her younger sister, who was more beautiful and more exciting. Part of her wants to put her mother in an assisted living facility, sell the house, and start some new adventure, but she feels too tethered to her responsibilities.

When Cilla's brother-in-law calls from Rome, asking for help getting her teenage niece to behave, she jumps at the chance to head to Italy. She's not interested in riding herd on Hannah, however; she's more interested in absorbing every ounce of the glamorous Roman lifestyle, one she used to experience regularly as the daughter of an actress and a producer. She'd much rather be Hannah's friend than her chaperone, and it isn't too long before Cilla finds herself clubbing, drinking and eating to excess, and enjoying all the city has to offer.

Being with Hannah and her brother-in-law, Paul, does force Cilla to confront some painful memories about her difficult relationship with her sister Emily, who died of cancer a few years earlier. Hannah reminds Cilla so much of Emily at that age, and at times she has trouble dealing with the many ways their relationship was fraught with jealousy, resentment, and condescension, while at other times they were tremendously close.

Cilla's time in Rome makes her feel vibrant again, for the first time in a long while. When she realizes that one of Hannah's handsome friends, a teenage boy far younger than the forty-something Cilla, is flirting with her, it energizes her to feel desirable by someone out of her league. But as the flirtation moves to something more serious, Cilla has to decide whether the potential thrill is worth the risks. Is she willing to lose her relationship with her family for an encounter with a teenager, however handsome and flirtatious he might be? Should she risk it all to feel desirable again, no matter the consequences?

The Worst Kind of Want tells the story of a woman at a crossroads in her life. This was an interesting, thoughtful meditation on the mindset of a "woman of a certain age." And perhaps not being in that demographic made this a little more difficult for me to connect with the character, although I've not had that issue before.

Jacobs’ imagery was vivid and poetic and she created some interestingly complex, flawed characters. But in the end, although I read the book quickly, I didn’t feel fully engaged by it. I enjoyed her first novel, Catalina, a bit better.

NetGalley, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and MCD provided me an advance copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks for making it available!

This book publishes November 5.

Unappealing. A solipsistic narrator, whose comfortable life in Malibu has been dominated by taking care of her failing parents, being the prey of a creepy film director since she was 15, and the death of her sister whom her mother liked better, now behaves badly in Rome. Supposedly there to take care of her niece, instead she indulges in an affair with the stereotype Roman youth on whom her niece has a crush. Rome and Puglia are described in familiar detail. The inevitable tragedy is telegraphed by incessant references to death. Flimsy work supposedly intensified by maudlin sentiment.

Thanks for the opportunity to read this book. The blurb appealed to me however the writing simply wasn't my style - for that reason I decided not to review this book on my blog.

Cilla has had a lot to deal with in the last few years- the death of her sister, the waning of her relationship with Guy, and care taking for her difficult mother. When her brother in law calls and asks her to come to Italy to see if she can do something with her niece Hannah, she thinks about it for a minute and then takes off. Hannah is a typical 15 year old in many ways; she's also got a crush on 17 year old Donato. Unfortunately, for her, Cilla and Donato have a crush on each other. Cilla is reckless, makes bad decisions and doesn't think things though but is that because of the effects of her grief and anger? You know from the start that this won't end well so the only question is how much damage it will do. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. This is nicely written and a worthy read.

I was unable to finish this book and thus will not providing a full review on my blog. I found the language jarring and had to re-read each sentence multiple times to comprehend it. I did not enjoy reading this. Thank you for your consideration.

I received an advanced copy of this book through NetGalley and the publisher for an honest review. I had read Jacobs' 1st novel Catalina and liked it enough. This book has a few strengths in the setting where most of the book takes place in Italy, which is very much a character of itself.

Priscilla is a caregiver for her aging mother who is in a rehab facility for a bad fall. Her actual job is unclear, or if she is well off. Her proximity to the movie industry in Hollywood is interesting, as her background growing up, but it wasn't really well explored. There is an ick factor in the relationships that Cilla has with Guy, a long time on and off lover who is a good 20 years older than her; that it started when she wasn't legal and that her parents didn't seem to care would be more alarming if they were more central characters in the book. Cilla goes to Italy, to stay with her 15 year old niece and her father, just a few years after her sister Emily died of cancer. The time in Italy (Rome, and by the Adriatic Sea) is a little blurry and while well written, not very detailed on some aspects. Cilla's affair with Hannah's crush is hard to imagine... she is 43 years old seducing/ being seduced by a 17 yr old Italian boy. I know some things are more lax in Europe, with drinking and sex but I found the relationship farfetched, as well as her need to keep things secret. It seemed so obvious to me as a reader. The ending of the book is quite abrupt just like Catalina was, I wanted more of the relationship between Cilla and her niece, but the focus on Cilla's lust for a 17 yr old was too much. She may have perpetuated what Guy had done with her. Also I wanted more descriptions of the food they ate, they were in Italy after all!!!

When reading this story of a middle aged woman’s lust for a much younger man, I find myself judging a woman’s midlife crisis more harshly than a man’s. Or is it (thankfully) that we’re no longer subjected to those as often, given the current climate? (We’ve come a long way, baby?) Maybe I’m over such self-centered navel gazing as a middle aged person myself. The whole notion is a cop out. Who doesn’t want to be young again? Who doesn’t envy those without cares? All in all, Cilla comes off as predatory and pathetic. After all, preying on youth doesn’t make you young again. It damages and prematurely ages the prey, which Cilla knows all too well.

Perhaps my biggest issue is with her shallowness. She resents not being pretty enough and wishes she was still on the scene. Her thoughts are all about appearances and she mopes about being left out of the adults’ conversation. Well, yeah, you’re not going to connect with the middleaged parents of the boy you’re lusting after.

She’s more shallow than her beautiful sister, still wondering what she saw in her nerdy husband. I did not identify with Cilla. In fact, I sort wanted to slap her. There is certainly realism here. Hurt people hurt people, after all. Yet, I’ve never counted it as some kind of feminist victory for a woman to be portrayed as a just as much of a shallow, single-minded abuser as a man can be. I was glad to be rid of Cilla’s point of view when I finished the book, and I look forward to the demise of this trend in female characters.

I admit to judging this book by its cover. My expectations were certainly higher. I did not find this to be a “dark exploration into the inherent dangers of being a woman.” That description is a little laughable. In reality, this is an exploration into the dangers of being a lonely, horny, middle aged woman that has martyred herself to take care of ailing parents and put herself in the shadow of a favored sibling. This book just fell flat for me, and the ending was an easy way out. How disappointing.

The Worst Kind Of Want is dark and sensual and has kept me on my toes in terms of where the plot line is going. ‘Cilla is forty-something and living a life she feels is slowly on the decline. She splits her time between caring for her elderly mother and craving love from Guy, the older man who’s been courting her with no intention of getting serious, for years. When the opportunity arises to visit her recently widowed brother-in-law and Niece in Italy for the summer, Cilla goes for it. But soon she’s being influenced by her niece’s youthful, uninhibited lifestyle and disaster is on its way.
The Worst Kind Of Want is about female desire and death and how our memories of the past aren’t always what we remember, or indeed what we want them to be. .

'I have not thought about my wants in so long that the flood of them makes me light-headed.'

Priscilla “Cilla” is only 43 but feels like life has aged her beyond her years, living with her mother whom is now in rehabilitation at a nursing home. Mother, needy, bitter and resentful, forcing her to placate her demands. Every visit feels like drudgery, reminding her of how stifling her life has become. Since the death of Cilla’s sister, her brother-in-law has lived with their daughter, her niece Hannah in Italy who is acting out, ‘Cilla, please. You will come, won’t you?’ It’s been a year since Hannah lost her mother, surely acting out is noraml, right? Yet if she goes, it would be an escape from the dullness of her life, but the idea of caring for yet another person is the kiss of death. Yet even the thought of ‘babysitting’ her fifteen year old niece is better than dealing with her impossible mother and her demands. It’s been a full year of dealing with her mother’s bottomless grief and ill health. Then there is her longtime boyfriend Guy, who spends his time directing tv series, once her own deceased father’s protégé who hungered after her all those years ago. He is distracted by all those young actresses dripping in dewy youth. How can she possibly shine by comparison when time takes it’s toll on the body? Italy it is!

Hannah is becoming quite the young woman, and with the son of family friends Donato’s attention she beams with youth and joy, infusing Cilla with life. Spending time with the pair feels like a seduction what with all the confidence, the freedom, indulging in the pleasures of Italy. Cilla is meant to be looking out for Hannah, keeping her on the straight and narrow, instead she is the one throwing caution off the cliff. Her adult confidence, and Hollywood ties makes her fascinating in Donato’s eyes.He longs to impress her, he is beautiful, could himself be a celebrity, right? Basking in the days and nights beside them feels erotic, as if she is going through a second awakening by accompanying the pair through their own. If she was a ‘better’ woman, she wouldn’t smudge the lines between moral and immoral, she wouldn’t succumb to the charm of a teenage boy but her body is so hungry, and the chemistry is electric, who would it really hurt if no one ever knows?

The scenery itself begs to be explored, it urges release, to abandon one’s every inhibition. She hasn’t given a thought to her own desires, needs in so long, how can anyone blame her for finally thinking of herself first? She should stop what is happening, but she doesn’t want to deny herself one second of it. “Romans love to have a good time at any age…”, so when in Rome… Why should she ‘behave’, nothing interesting comes of that, being old doesn’t make a person dead, we still long for the thrill of things.

Being around Hannah takes her back to the beginning of her relationship with the much older Guy. When she was ‘no longer a little girl but not yet a woman’, same phase her niece has entered, playing grownup. How easy it is to play at being a sexual creature, emulating womanhood. The carelessness of her own parents in the past, too much freedom for she and her sister,Hannah’s mother, youthful flirtations gone too far. Maybe Cilla isn’t the best choice in caging a teenager’s impulses, especially when in her shoes she didn’t cage her own. Maybe despite being so much older now, she is just as likely to jump into the lion’s mouth.

A woman will be punished for letting herself go, for indulging. Cilla isn’t going to be the dutiful aunt, she is going to taste life while she still can even if it could hurt those she is there to protect. Like so many human beings, despite what we know will follow, we still act on impulses. “How easy it is to ignore the darkness in the distance.” All she has is here and now, to focus on what could come of her ‘reckless abandon’ would be a betrayal, especial to herself. But indulgence and deception always comes at a price, is considered downright criminal when a woman of a certain age misbehaves. It’s an indulgent and shameful novel, as most things we know better than to partake of are and engaging because of it. We know the entire time, this isn’t going to end well.

Publication Date: November 5, 2019

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

THE WORST KIND OF WANT follows 40-something Cilla on a trip to Italy to care for her 16-year-old niece, Hannah, in the wake of Hannah's mother's death. But Cilla's spent her whole life caring for her ailing parents and babysitting is the last thing she wants to do while travelling; instead, she gets swept into Rome's party scene and begins a flirtation with a teenage boy.

Every single page of this book is absolutely brutal. Jacobs paints a portrait of an aging woman in immense discomfort and insecurity as well as a portrait of a woman who doesn't quite understand the damage that a decades-long inappropriate relationship has done. Jacobs makes Cilla's outlook on her life and actions clearly known and, perhaps, the greatest achievement of the book is the way it conveys a message that's almost completely misunderstood (or overlooked) by its protagonist,. I haven't ready many books that tackle the notion of those abused becoming abusers as well as this did. This is an uncomfortable read reminiscent of a gender-swapped LOLITA, but it's one that puts forth a very important discussion about boundaries, abuse, and the importance of honestly evaluating one's own experience and trauma.