Title- If We Were Villains
Author- M.L Rio
Series- N/A
Published- 2017
Page Count- 422
Publishing House- Titan Books
Genre- mystery, dark academia
Rating- 5/5 stars
About the Author
M. L. Rio was born in Miami and raised in North Carolina by parents from California, and has never known how to answer the question, “Where are you from?” She is a reader, writer, thespian, and melomaniac. Storytelling has always been her specialty.
Her writing career began when she participated in Reading Rainbow’s Young Writers and Illustrators Contest and wrote her first real story–about a girl who was lucky enough to have a pet dragon and somehow clever enough to hide it from her parents and everyone else who might have been interested in such a biological marvel. She suppressed the creative itch for a few years, and then picked up a pen to write her first novel at the much more judicious age of twelve. Mercifully she realised it was garbage, scrapped it and started writing something else. Half a dozen ‘Drawer Novels’ later, she is represented by Arielle Datz of Dunow, Carlson & Lerner Literary Agency, Inc. Her debut novel, If We Were Villains, was published by Flatiron Books in 2017.
Taken from M.L Rio's website.
Plot
Oliver Marks has just served ten years for a murder he may or may not have committed. On the day of his release, he is greeted by the detective who put him in prison. Detective Colborne is retiring, and he wants to know what really happened a decade before.
As a young actor at an elite conservatory, Oliver noticed that his talented classmates seem to play the same characters onstage and off – villain, hero, temptress – though he was always a supporting role. But when the teachers change the casting, a good-natured rivalry turns ugly, and the plays spill dangerously over into real 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...
Taken from Goodreads.
Opinions
I had heard nothing but good things about this book and rightly so. I loved this book from start to end. I didn't want to stop reading. This is set in a theatre school, with lots of reference to the theatre and it made me miss the theatre so much. I haven't been in over a year because of COVID and I am now desperate to get back into a theatre because of this book. The writing style was addictive. On average, I'd say I read between 20-50 pages a day but when I was reading this, I was easily reading 50-100 a day because of the writing.
The mystery in this book kept you hooked. You knew that one of the seven died and I was kinda surprised when it was revealed to be Richard. I had assumed it would be James as that was what had been foreshadowed. Each twist and turn was executed so well that you needed to know more. I think it helped that it was an interesting setting and an interesting set of characters. To some degree, they were cliched, but the more you got to know them, the more you saw that they weren't. There wasn't a character I didn't find engaging. They were also very entangled and it was fun trying to piece together the connections between each person. The reveal that James had killed Richard really took me by surprise. When I started reading it, I was adamant that it would be the other way around. A solid mystery that kept me on my toes.
Despite how much I loved this book, I will say that I did have one issue with it. After a while, I did find the amount of Shakespearean dialogue annoying. I like Shakespeare and have seen the vast majority of his plays throughout my life. The shorter quotes were fine, it was when there were whole passages that it got a bit much. Also one of the major reveals was told through dialogue from King Lear (my least favourite Shakespeare play) and it kinda lost me. I understand why there was so much Shakespearean dialogue as this is set at a Shakespeare theatre school, but it did become quite annoying. Something I loved about how it was about the theatre and actors is how at times it was formated to be like a play. It was a really nice touch that I appreciated a lot.
A plot line that kinda came out of the blue and I'm unsure how I feel about it was the romance between James and Oliver. We were never shown it, we were only told about it in the ten years afterwards sections. It didn't add much to their characters and felt a bit like an afterthought. I am glad that there was some LGBT+ rep. I just wish we could have seen more of it when they were interacting with each other.
Overall, I bloody loved this book. I can see it making it onto my favourites for the year. I would read from M.L Rio whenever she releases another book as she knows how to capture an audience. I think these types of book, mysteries with dark academia vibes might be a favourite as I also loved The Secret History by Donna Tartt. That also had a character called Richard, so maybe it's a staple name for these types of books.
What did you think of If We Were Villains by M.L Rio?
