If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio
Enter the Players. There were seven of us then, seven bright young things with wide precious futures ahead of us. Until that year, we saw no farther than the books in front of our faces.
On the day Oliver Marks is released from jail, the man who put him there is waiting at the door. Detective Colborne wants to know the truth, and after ten years, Oliver is finally ready to tell it.
A decade ago: Oliver is one of seven young Shakespearean actors at Dellecher Classical Conservatory, a place of keen ambition and fierce competition. In this secluded world of firelight and leather-bound books, Oliver and his friends play the same roles onstage and off: hero, villain, tyrant, temptress, ingenue, extra.
But in their fourth and final year, good-natured rivalries turn ugly, and on opening night real violence invades the students’ world of make-believe. In the morning, the fourth-years find themselves facing their very own tragedy, and their greatest acting challenge yet: convincing the police, each other, and themselves that they are innocent.
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This book is the epitome of dark academia so if that’s your cup of tea, pick this book up now! If We Were Villains is fashioned after the great Shakespearean tragedies and I, as a lover of Shakespeare (especially the tragedies), can honestly say succeeded in bringing out each and every emotion that a Shakespearean tragedy inspires: anger, elation, rage, vengefulness, grief, hopelessness, and fear. I think this book is a great credit to Rio for successfully pulling forth those emotions so harshly and without remorse. I literally just finished this book so excuse me for the dramatics, my mind is still in another world right now. The plot was flawless, I felt like I was chronically in suspense but also fully immersed in this world of art and performance (and of course a drafty castle full of leather-bound books and surrounded by questionable peers). This was like a much more tolerable version of The Secret History (sorry if any of you are Donna Tartt fans) but better because: Shakespeare.
We start off in the present with Oliver, our MC getting released from prison and promising to tell the cop that put him there the full truth of what happened so long ago. Each section of the book was a separate “Act” in the great tragedy that was Oliver’s fourth year of College and each chapter separated into scenes. Each Act’s prologue was Oliver in the present telling his story and then the remainder of the Act we are immersed in the past. I really loved the setup of it all, it kept it mysterious but also showed very transparently how the characters’ real lives began to truly mimic the tragic plays that they were performing, how their characters slowly morphed into who they played on stage. It was a fascinating transition.
The plot itself was very good, we transition from fall to spring semesters as kind of a “before” and “after” the event that takes place. It was a lot darker than I was expecting even knowing what happens going into this book. The deep dive that this book took into the darker side of humanity and what we would do to protect ourselves, those we love, or even our legacies was chilling. There were a lot of uncomfortable truths in this book and it definitely makes you question the morality behind every action and ask yourself “what would I have done?”. I also really liked how it slowly just built and built right until the dramatic ending just like a tragic play. It left me quite desolate at the end, feeling exactly how I did the first time I finished Hamlet. I especially loved the hero/villain/sidekick dynamic between Richard, Oliver, and James and how those roles kept shifting.
There were a few things I wasn’t a fan of. As much as I love Shakespeare, I could have gone without the full chapter length regurgitation of his works. The length of the scenes and quotes felt a bit unnecessary to me as well as the characters’ tendencies to talk to each other in Shakespeare quotes while in real arguments…. It yanked me out of the world pretty quick and felt a bit ridiculous, I had to stop my eyes from skipping over those paragraphs altogether. I also really hated how the women were portrayed. Meredith especially. I did not like her at all and I felt that was deliberate as we’re seeing her through Olivers eyes….however, if seen from a third person narrative I think she may have been my favourite character. Instead, however, all we seen was her as this seductress just because she owned her sexuality and had great stage presence? I didn’t like that. And the dynamics in this friend group made it seem like there’s no way a group of girls could be friends with the guys in the group without somehow forming multiple sexual relationships with them, henceforth, screwing up the group dynamic. It felt like a stream of subtle sexism ran throughout a lot of Oliver’s thoughts which made me like him quite a bit less than I should.
All in all, it was a fabulous plot and definitely the perfect read for fellow lovers of Dark Academia genres, however, it did have it’s faults and as much as I enjoyed the havoc this book wreaked on my emotions, I felt it could have done a lot better in some instances. 3.5 stars.