If We Were Villains: A Novel

by M L Rio

Oliver Marks has just served ten years for the murder of one of his closest friends - a murder he may or may not have committed. On the day he's released, he's greeted by the detective who put him in prison. Detective Colborne is retiring, but before he does, he wants to know what really happened ten years ago. As a young actor studying Shakespeare at an elite arts conservatory, Oliver noticed that his talented classmates seem to play the same roles onstage and off - villain, hero, tyrant, temptress - though Oliver felt doomed to always be a secondary character in someone else's story. But when the teachers change up the casting, a good-natured rivalry turns ugly, and the plays spill dangerously over into life. When tragedy strikes, one of the seven friends is found dead. The rest face their greatest acting challenge yet: convincing the police, and themselves, that they are blameless. Beautifully written with a thrilling plot, If We Were Villains is a story of friendship, passion, and obsession.

• ISBN10: 125009528X
• ISBN13: 9781250095282
• Publish Date: 11 April 2017
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Flatiron Books
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 368
• Language: English

Reviews

[Witty and Sarcastic Bookclub]

If We Were Villains is a story of a group of Shakespearean students at an art college who let the line between the real and the pretend blur, and the disastrous events that follow. While it could be seen as a mystery- or even a thriller- what stuck out to me were the relationships. In a case where life imitated art instead of the other way around, already out-of-touch personalities devolved into baser natures and the results were fascinating.

The story is told from the point of view of Oliver, one of a group of seven students. He is reminiscing and filling in the blanks after serving ten years for the murder of another in his group of seven. Did he really do it? Why? The memories have the fascinating quality of real, often-revisited recollections: they were gilded, sharpened to put unconscious emphasis on certain points, made fuzzier with time in others. There was always a small hint of suspicion that maybe Oliver was still playing a part, that he was in truth an unreliable narrator.

The lives of the students reminded me a little bit of the movie Dead Poets Society in that the group was incredibly close and they were fully immersed in their own way of thinking, up to the fact that it even affected their speech. Where in Dead Poets Society, you see the group often quoting poetry, If We Were Villains finds them using the Bard’s verse to speak truths that they otherwise hide. It is enthralling and made me appreciate Shakespeare, something that is new for me (I’ve never been a fan). The author uses the anger, fear, and desperation felt by the characters to bring the quotes into a different context. Or maybe she uses the quotes to bring a new dimension to the characters?

The characters themselves were engrossing. They were both more and less than the parts they played. There’s the fill-ins who find themselves chameleons onstage and in the group dynamic, the villain, the hero, the love interest, the ingénue, and the antihero. The students play their roles so well it left me wondering if they were, in fact, only acting. And that’s half of the brilliance of If We Were Villains.

There’s a microworld that I was drawn into, one that is very much real to the characters despite being centered around a dead writer. The atmosphere is fascinating: like a play, everything is heightened and larger than life. The stakes are higher, the relationships more intense yet brittle. The break, when it happens, is on an epic scale. This small world suddenly feels huge.

It is difficult to pick one particular thing that made me love the book as much as I did. I can’t take the characters separately from the language, the atmosphere, the pacing. It all moved together so well that there wasn’t a single thing that I didn’t love. From the very first sentence to the final curtain, everything was perfect.

I enjoyed the book so much that I didn’t want it to end. The ending itself, however, was perfect. The story was ended satisfactorily, but with room left to wonder. I continue to find myself thinking about it, questioning my reactions, and moving pieces of the narrative around in my mind.

If We Were Villains is smart and compelling, one of the very best books I’ve read this year. If you’re looking for a book to suck you in and leave you floored, this one is for you.

https://wittyandsarcasticbookclub.home.blog/2021/09/28/if-we-were-villains-by-m-l-rio/

[alindstadtcorbeax]

Star Rating: —> 3.5 Stars


This kept my attention, & I loved the queer rep, plus the ending was great... but idk it just wasn't for me. Please don't hate me for saying this, but... Shakespeare is a topic I have fairly little interest in, though I do love some of his works.

FF: I do appreciate modern retellings or reworkings, fresh takes, etc. etc. of his works, though! But mainly it just was too much! The majority of lines in this book are from Shakespeare plays & works. Shakespeare buffs/ lovers will LOVE THIS ! But nahh, nope—like I said— to me... that just bores me, idk.

[maggiefan]

...um...

[Mad Soul Child]

опустошение

[roundtableknight]

“You can justify anything if you do it poetically enough.”
~
Rating: 4.5 stars

This book. I'm still reeling from the ending and everything that happened in it, and its been a few days since I finished it. What to say about it, hmm. Oliver, the main character, is an amazing narrator for this specific book. He knows that people are flawed, and that his friends, and himself, are flawed as well, but he will stick with them to protect them. Half the time I wanted to commemorate his perceived selflessness, and the other half I wished to just shake him until he found some common sense.

If you don't know anything about this book, perfect. It's best to just jump in knowing its a dark academia book that will slowly kill you and everything you ever thought was innocent in the world. I wish I could just start from the beginning again and find all the foreshadowing and easter eggs bound to be in the book. The only reason that I dare to not rate this five stars is because I wished to go in depth with some of the characters more. I know that some information wasn't important to the main plot points, but I do wish I could have learned more about the other six characters.

[kalventure]

Expectation is the root of all heartache - William Shakespeare

As a former Thespian and lifelong lover of Shakespeare, If We Were Villains is a book I should have loved. So many friends spoke so highly of it that I went in with tough-to-meet expectations, and unfortunately, they were not met. I think this is a book people will either love or hate; I should have DNF'd it early on to save myself the frustration but I was curious about the mystery!

The book largely focuses on the daily lives of the seven fourth-year acting students at their elite performing arts university. All of the characters are pretty much fit a caricature, and I didn't really connect with anyone other than our main character Oliver. Rio does a good job of nailing the comradery developed within a theatre company and the clashes of personality. These students breathe Shakespeare, quoting random lines from his Works in everyday conversation with one another, which I found endearing. But despite my love of the Bard, I really did not enjoy reading about their four performances as they are acted out. If I wanted to read scenes from Macbeth, I would pull out my Complete Works.

I was looking for a murder mystery full of unreliable characters and betrayal. While those expectations were bare minimum met, I found the mystery to almost be the subplot to Oliver's journey of self-discovery, which would have been beautiful but I found it tainted by a lot of horrible people.

“You can justify anything if you do it poetically enough.”

I found myself pretty uncomfortable reading the book because of the bullying and slut-shaming, as well as the rather ubiquitous homophobia. The group is incredibly accepting of Alexander's sexuality (gay); however, everyone is really nasty toward Oliver for a friendship that they think might be more. Everyone is selfish and cruel, which may be an accurate depiction of reality but isn't really something I want to read. I honestly don't even want to mention the pansexual subplot in the book because the harmful bullying and homophobia endured are unchallenged.

"You can't quantify humanity. You can't measure a - not the way you mean to. People are passionate and flawed and fallible. They make mistakes."

It's obvious that this book is M.L. Rio's love letter to theatre and the Bard. I think this is a book you will either love or hate, and I am sad to say that this book wasn't for me. The prose is beautiful and poetic, but the overall narrative structure just didn't work for me. If you love Shakespeare, this book may be something you enjoy, but I wouldn't really recommend this to those who aren't pretty familiar with his work.

Content warnings: bullying, drinking, eating disorder (and shitty comments about it), recreational drug use, homophobia, murder, slut-shaming, substance abuse, suicide

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[Stephanie]

As I said immediately upon finishing: What the frickin' frack?!

I was touch and go for a little while in the beginning, and even though I studied Shakespeare a lot in college, some of it was lost on me in parts. But it doesn't matter because... what. That ending. What.

[gmcgregor]

A group of people who are super duper into Shakespeare is the focus of M. L. Rio's If We Were Villains, which mostly follows seven Shakespearean acting students in their senior year at an exclusive arts college. We know something big and bad happened, because the book opens with one of the seven (Oliver, our protagonist) being released from prison after a decade. He agrees to return to his alma mater and speak to the detective who put him behind bars to finally reveal the true story of what happened all those years ago.

Based on the length of sentence alone, it shouldn't be surprising that what happened was that someone died. The who and the how I'll leave for the reading of it, because the bigger issue is what happened after that person died. The way the remaining members of the group deal with the death, and how it changes their relationships with each other, both on and off the stage. They'd each developed a little niche over their years together (the king, the femme fatale, the good guy, the ingenue, the villain, etc), and the removal of one of the spokes of the wheel renders the structure unstable.

If you've read The Secret History, a lot of that will sound pretty familiar to you. Indeed, it's pretty obvious that Donna Tartt's debut novel was a significant source of inspiration for Rio for her own. And that's fine, Tartt doesn't own the concept of a tight-knit group of students studying an obscure subject at an exclusive private college dealing with the fallout from the death of one of their own. But here's the thing: if you're going to write a book with strong parallels to a novel that's been consistently popular since it was published 25 years ago, you have do it at least as well or better. And although I want to make it clear that I did enjoy reading If We Were Villains (I did love The Secret History, after all), Rio didn't quite hit that mark.

The characters fall a little too neatly into the roles they fill onstage: Richard, the king-type, really is a raging egomaniac; Meredith the femme fatale really is a sexpot; Wren the ingenue really is demure and sweet, etc etc. Where this fails most problematically is that the "background player" types are kind of underdeveloped, and that's Oliver and Filippa. Oliver, you'll remember, is the main character and while it's not unusual for a reader-insert-character protagonist to be kind of bland, Oliver never really captured or held interest for me. Filippa is the only other member of the group that doesn't come from privilege and the small peeks we get at who she is make her easily the most potentially interesting character, and it's frustrating that she's given the short shrift. The plot developments, too, weren't handled especially deftly. I'm generally not good at anticipating plot twists, but I called nearly all of the major ones easily. Rio's prose is solid, though, and I'd definitely be open to reading more from her in the future. I'd recommend this to people who loved The Secret History and want to read something similar, but if you haven't read that book yet, it's better than this one.