Rio draws on her training as an actor to create the world of an elite drama school ripped apart by a disaster of Shakespearean proportions. A work in the dark academia genre, the campus novel is part murder mystery and part dramatic tragedy. Now I want to understand all of the 5 star “this is literally the best book ever” reviews that I saw. If We Were Villains, the debut novel of actor and author M.L. I wanted another The Secret History, and that’s my fault. Set in the late 1990s, the main focus is on seven fourth-year students at an arts conservatory’s acting program focused on William Shakespeare. Rio’s If We Were Villains creates a story leaving readers thinking about every detail long after finishing the book. The characters’ actions also often felt erratic and difficult to follow, and the constant use of Shakespeare throughout the story often came across as pretentious.Īnd this all makes me sad, because I really wanted to love it. With themes of tragedy, dark academia and mystery, M.L.
We aren’t given enough time to understand what he was like before going crazy, or what the first three years of their schooling together were like when they all were friends, or what pushed him off the deep end. Now, this group of 7 people who devoted their lives to their art, to theatre and Shakespeare were hardly someone who the world would understand and thus. Thus, spanning over the years and mainly focusing on their close group of 7. However, Villains felt comparatively shallow, with poor character development and a rushed story that spent no time establishing Richard (the Bunny character here), to the point that his transformation from friend to villain came out of nowhere and doesn’t make any sense. SUMMARY: If We Were Villains by M.L.Rio follows as Oliver narrates the story to the now retiring Detective Colborne. I picked up If We Were Villains because it was suggested to me as The Secret History but with Shakespeare.
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