Comparing it to The Secret History practically sets a book up to fail! However, this dark campus mystery does stand on its own. Students at an elite arts college are studying Shakespeare, only the characters they play may reflect a little too much of who they are becoming. When a murder occurs, Oliver Marks goes to prison. Only he may not be guilty. Ten years later, the detective wants to know what really happened. Appealing to dark academia lovers everywhere, this is a true page turner. Highly recommended!

Incredible first novel by a debut author. I love the dark academia vibe and lovers of The Secret History by Donna Tartt will find comfort in this story and set of characters.

I loved this book when I first read it and have revisited it since. The campus setting feels so real and lived in. This is The Secret History but for theatre majors!

I loved this book! I love mysteries and police procedurals, so of course I loved that aspect of it, but I also loved how tied-in this was to conservatory life and the world of theater. I've been interested in Shakespeare for a long time, and this is a perfect book for anyone interested in both theater and in murder mysteries. I've also been a fan of M.L. Rio's blog for a long time, and her writing is just beautiful. This book lived up to all my expectations, and was certainly a very unique idea, but fell into some cliches and lacked that spark that all my five-star books have.

Well developed characters and plot.

I've been waiting to read this, because I have followed the author on Tumblr for a long time. It was worth the wait

This was not a good book, but it sure was readable. I didn't have the highest of expectations, but it certainly seemed like it'd be up my alley -- I've read "The Secret History" and I like Shakespeare -- but I found myself incredibly frustrated.
I made the mistake of skimming some of the reviews, which made me think that some great twist was waiting at the end. A spoiler: it is not.

The writing is ... fine. It's fine, I guess. Rio makes the mistake of thinking that an ability to quote Shakespeare often and at length is a sign of cleverness. It's not; it's simply infuriating. There is no real dialogue in the book -- every question, every remark is bookended with huge chunks of Shakespearean lines. The characters, who are equally obsessed with Shakespeare and painfully arrogant -- are barely drawn pastiches of every other character in a boarding school novel.

Ultimately, the book was compelling. I'm not sure why I found myself continuing to read this book I have so little love for. I will admit, I did enjoy the staging of the plays. They were rare glimpses into an actual beating heart hiding behind the pretension and flimsy narrative.

Loved this book
Didn't want it to end
Highly recommended

This book surprised me. I was utterly shocked how invested I was in this book. Very well written and relatable characters

We all have our things...some people love books, some people can't get enough of home renovation, some people can tell you the entire history of the American presidency. Some people are into Shakespeare. It's a group of those people who are super duper into Shakespeare that's the focus of M. L. Rio's If We Were Villains. The book mostly follows the senior year at an exclusive arts college of a group of seven Shakespearean acting students. We know something big and bad happened, because the book opens with one of the seven (Oliver, who will be 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 while I'd definitely be open to reading more from her in the future, I'm not going to be scouring publishing news waiting for her follow up. 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.

DNF @ 10%

I overlooked the Shakespearean focus of this novel in favor of the comparisons to The Secret History. My mistake. Shakespeare has just never, and I’m resigned to believe will never, be my thing. The opening gives the reader a glimpse at the future, of one of the main characters being released for jail for an unknown crime, and it’s a hook that works. But then we’re introduced to seven characters: Richard, Meredith, Filippa, Alexander, Wren, James, and Oliver. Every single one of these characters, regardless of gender, all blended together without any helpful differentiation to keep track of who was who. The theater kid stereotypes were excessive in my opinion and you practically had to be a theater kid to understand and/or appreciate most of it.

“That was ruthless,” I said, sotto voce.

The author holds a Masters in Shakespeare studies so, being as far from a theater kid as one can get, I can only assume she knows what she’s talking about. Constantly quoting Shakespeare in conversation got old, fast, and by 10% I put on my hipster glasses and called it quits.

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I was eager to read this book as soon as I read about it, and it didn't disappoint. The writing is sharp and fluid and the story moves at a good pace with intriguing, multi-faceted characters. I would recommend this for fans of Donna Tartt or Emma Donague!

Thank you Netgalley and Flatiron Books for the eARC.
After reading many favorable reviews, I was really looking forward to reading this book. Unfortunately, I did not like it.
The 7 main characters were unappealing spoilt brats who attend an arts college, studying Shakespeare, enacting his plays, hoping to find careers as actors. They form close bonds, alternately squabbling, quoting the Bard constantly and romancing each other. When one of them ends up murdered, the group shatters and one of them confesses, subsequently spending a 10-year stretch in jail.
Upon his release he reveals the truth to the then officer heading the case, which comprises the rest of the book.
At the end I had a 'what the heck!' moment, as in: no one in their right mind would do that...
I have to admit to not being a Shakespeare fan, so I found the many quotes and scenes boring. That said, fans of Shakespeare might enjoy this book.

The crime's the thing -- and so's the cover-up -- in M.L. Rio's audaciously entertaining If We Were Villains (Flatiron Books, digital galley). Imagine Donna Tartt's The Secret History set at an elite arts conservatory in Illinois, where the acting students are obsessed with all things Shakespeare. By the fall of 1997, the seven fourth-year students -- all bright, young things -- know each other so well they can predict who will play what roles in an upcoming production of Julius Caesar. What they cannot predict is that their onstage parts soon will spill over into real life: lovers will fight one another, friends will betray friends, someone will end up dead.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. First-time author and former actor Rio structures her literary thriller like a five-act Shakespearean drama, beginning with a prologue as former student Oliver Marks is released from prison after serving 10 years for murder. Waiting for him is the retired detective who initially worked the case and who wants to hear what really happened after the cast party a decade ago. Oliver then unfolds in flashback a story of love and friendship, obsession and deceit, with passions and secrets worthy of a Shakespearean tragedy.

For theater nerds and Shakespeare fans, the book is enthralling. An account of the three witches scene from Macbeth staged lakeside on Halloween night offers midnight magic. A production of King Lear features a set of mirrors reflecting the constellations of the night sky. Still, Rio is so well-versed in the plays that the students often speak to each other in pertinent quotes, and there's no stopping for footnotes. Here's Henry V, Pericles, A Winter's Tale, Troilus and Cressida. One moment leading man Richard is spouting "How many fond fools serve mad jealousy'' from A Comedy of Errors, and in the next, seductive Meredith is running to the lake proclaiming "How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank'' from The Merchant of Venice.

It's a credit to Rio's writing style that these bits of poetry and prose enhance the narrative for the most part, that it seems normal for Oliver to think of Hamlet upon the discovery of a classmate's body. These kids live and breathe Shakespeare, and all the world's their stage. "One sin, I know, another doth provoke; Murder's as near to lust as flame to smoke.'' -- from On a Clear Day I Can Read Forever

If We Were Villains follows seven close-knit students, seniors in a prestigious acting program, as they fall into their very own Shakespearean tragedy. Studying at the elite Dellecher Classical Conservatory, the students are immersed in the plays of Shakespeare, secluded from reality in a suitably castle-like dormitory, reading antique leather-bound editions and drinking expensive whiskey in front of roaring fires. While not exactly comparable to most post-secondary education experiences, the dramatic world of these students is easy to become immersed in, especially as the lines between fiction and reality begin to blur.

The story is narrated by Oliver, an outsider among the group because he is merely upper-middle-class, as opposed to the vast wealth of his friends. As the novel opens, Oliver is just being released from prison, as a result of an incident that took place ten years previous at Dellecher. Detective Colborne, the officer that originally investigated the students, is ready to retire, but he is desperate to know who really committed the crime to which Oliver confessed. Oliver is finally ready to tell the truth, but even he does not know the whole story of what transpired on that fateful night.

The novel is set out in five acts, mirroring the structure of a Shakespearean play. As the students take on the roles they are assigned in plays such as MacBeth and Julius Caesar, they become so involved that their characters begin to cross over into real life – they take on frightening aspects of the heroes, villains and temptresses that Shakespeare imagined. Unsurprisingly, the violence of the plays soon spills over into their lives until a real tragedy occurs, shaking up their small community. Each of the seven is a witness to what happened, but only a few of them know who did it – and there are always more secrets to be exposed.

Although it is being compared strongly to The Secret History, this novel is really quite a basic whodunnit, embellished with excessive Shakespeare quotes – his words are not only sprinkled into everyday conversation, they actually form the majority of conversations between the seven friends. The result is affected and pretentious, but I think it was meant to be that way – like many of Shakespeare’s tragic heroes, Oliver and his friends are too overwhelmed by their own hubris to see what’s happening right in front of them. And of course, the unlikableness of the characters always makes them more interesting.

I struggled with how to rate this novel, because there are certainly problems with it – but ultimately, it was entertaining enough that I felt compelled to finish Oliver’s confession. The thoughtful and intelligent concept of this novel outweighs any problems with its execution, and I will certainly continue to read Rio’s future novels, to see what she comes up with next.

I received this book from Flatiron Books and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Headline:
If We Were Villains is the dark campus novel I’ve been craving ever since loving Christopher J. Yates’s Black Chalk three years ago…and is one of my favorite books of 2017 so far.

Plot Summary:
After spending ten years in prison, Oliver Marks is ready to tell the story of the tragedy that happened to his seven best friends and fellow Shakespeare theatre students during their fourth year at Dellecher, an intense Conservatory for the arts.

Why I Read It:
Susie at Novel Visits recommended this book and compared it to Donna Tartt’s The Secret History (which I loved). Plus, I’m a complete sucker for campus novels, especially dark ones.

Major Themes:
Friendship, Shakespeare, Secrets / Betrayal

What I Loved:
- If We Were Villains is a dark, sinister, Gothic campus novel jam-packed with emotional tension. The dynamics between Oliver and his group of friends are incredibly complicated and constantly shifting, resulting in nail-biting suspense. After the 20% mark, I could not put this book down!
- The story kicks off with a Prologue that made me think A) I’m dying to know what happened to this group of friends ten years ago and B) I’m pretty sure it’s going to be really messed up.
- Though I have mixed feelings about all the Shakespeare in this book (see “What I Didn’t Like” below), I do think the general theme contributed to much of the book’s Gothic feel and made what could be interpreted as mundane friendship dynamics feel much more sinister. I just knew that one of these people was going to become believably capable of doing something monstrous.
- What ended up happening with the Dellecher fourth years was surprising (particularly how it went down), but absolutely made sense within the context of the story. I could see how each player ended up in the role (obligatory acting pun!) they did.

What I Didn’t Like:
- References to and excerpts from Shakespeare’s plays are incorporated throughout this book. The students pepper their own conversations with Shakespeare one-liners, discuss the plays in class, and refer to themes from the plays in their daily lives. I admit I’m not a fan of Shakespeare and find his language kind of unintelligible, so this initially annoyed me. Just before the 20% mark, I actually considered putting the book down. However, I’m so relieved I kept going. I realized that you don’t have to pay close attention to the Shakespeare excerpts or really understand them to get invested in the story. So, don’t let a wariness of Shakespeare deter you from reading this!

A Defining Quote:
"Actors are by nature volatile – alchemic creatures composed of incendiary elements, emotion and ego and envy. Heat them up, stir them together, and sometimes you get gold. Sometimes disaster."

Good for People Who Like…
Campus Novels, Friendship, Shakespeare, Secrets / Betrayal, Dark Stories

If one were to take a boarding school story, throw in a mysterious death, add to it the psychology of guilt, and top it off with a lot of Shakespeare, you get something like If We Were Villains. The story starts at the end, upon the main character's release from prison, where he spent the last ten years for a murder charge. However, who the victim was and the motivation for the crime remain a mystery. The rest of the story, minus introductory sections between each act, is one big flashback, as Oliver reflects on his senior year at the college, his friends and rivals, and the events that brought him to prison.

While it is a decent murder mystery, If We Were Villains is almost better as an homage to Shakespeare. Ms. Rio structures the book as one of Shakespeare's plays, the characters are deep into their final year of performing nothing but his plays, and they speak to each other using Shakespeare's dialogue as their own. Everything Oliver and his friends do and say oozes Shakespeare. While one does not technically need to be a Shakespearean expert to enjoy the novel, any prior knowledge about his plays and their general structure will improve one's enjoyment of the novel. Along the same lines, while understanding the quotes is not necessary to understand the story, being familiar with the dialogue and being able to interpret it will improve one's understanding of key scenes. Ms. Rio often uses the context of the plays as enacted by the characters to build the emotional context of her story. The text is too closely intertwined with Shakespeare to be able to ignore those sections completely.

When I first started writing this review, I kept thinking of the introduction for the 1990s MTV show The Real World: "This is the true story, of seven strangers, picked to live in a house, work together, and have their lives taped. Find out what happens, when people stop being polite, and start getting real." If We Were Villains is The Real World but when these strangers live and work together for four years rather than a few months. Just like in the TV show, tensions rise, sides are chosen, people take on various roles as required by any group of people. However, to discount the strain of acting upon the seven is to ignore a key stressor in their lives. Because they are together all the time, they forget where their emotions end and the emotions of their characters begin. The lines between the real world and the acting world blur and therein lies the conflict.

In a novel full of pretension and superiority complexes, it would be easy to dismiss Oliver and his friends as nothing more than spoiled college kids who have no understanding of the real world. In some ways, this is very true. They are complete in their isolation. The town in which the college resides is small, and the college itself accepts a small number of students. In addition, there is little interaction among the various arts disciplines outside of meal times and parties. Then, for Oliver and his friends, they are staying in a residence hall that is well-removed from the rest of the campus and surrounded by woods. They have almost no contact with the outside world and even find themselves removed from their fellow classmates. Yet it would be difficult to say that they have no understanding of the real world. Their obsession with the Bard affords them a better understanding of the human mind than most of their contemporaries. Through rigorous tutelage of Shakespeare, his words and the emotions they evoke, the historical context, and the like, they understand better than other college students and most adults man's capacity for drama and man's ability to be swept up by emotions. This should make them less susceptible to falling prey to those same emotions. However, emotions rule all Shakespeare plays, and in this way, If We Were Villains mirrors Shakespeare.

If We Were Villains is so much more than a murder mystery. It explores human nature and the fine lines that separate all emotions. It is reality television for the literary mind, with its closed set and closed cast. Moreover, it is a love note to Shakespeare and his co-authors, for the plays that capture the essence of human emotion and the words which do more to express that emotion more than anything written to date. While not for everyone, it is a worthy story that is immensely readable and exciting.

This is by far my favorite book of the year, not just because I'm a retired English teacher and Shakespeare lover, but because the characters come alive and the prose is lovely! Seven students who immerse themselves in Shakespeare productions and are fast friends, find themselves at the center of a murderous plot when one of them is found dead and suspicion surrounds them all. What secrets will be revealed and which relationships are more than what they appear to be? Only a true Shakespeare scholar could weave the Bard's lines into this intricate and poignant novel that will keep you guessing until the end. I stayed up way past midnight to finish this jewel! Bravo!

This was one of those stories where I couldn't stop thinking about the characters. Driving to work? Thinking about Oliver. Going to sleep? Worrying about James. Eating lunch? Wondering about Filippa. The writing is beautiful, the characters are, despite how pretentious they are, lovable. The ending...my favorite kind. A perfect nod to the Bard himself.

Before I dive into this review, I want to give a little bit of background about why I was so excited for this book to come out and how I first stumbled across. If you're not interested in any of that, then feel free to jump past this paragraph. About a year or so ago I stumbled across this great blog on Tumblr called Duke of Bookingham. I loved the blog and the personality behind it—everything was very anonymous, so I had no idea who the identity of the blog owner was. Now, the 'Duke' had mentioned a few times that she was having a book published, but that she was leaving things separate and anonymous until it was closer to the book being released. Now, based off of how much I loved her blog, I had a really good feeling that I would love whatever she wrote, so when the Duke finally connected her book blog and author blog and revealed herself as M. L. Rio, author of the upcoming book If We Were Villains, I was beyond thrilled. And then when I discovered the summary and genre of the book, well, I knew I had to read it.

If We Were Villains fall into the category of books often likened to The Secret History, which is one of my all-time favorite books, hands down. That genre—close knit group of students, secrets that are potentially deadly, an almost unhealthy obsession with a certain area of study, etc.—is also one of my favorite genres, and I am such a sucker for any book like that (if you also like that genre, then may I also recommend you try out Black Chalk by Christopher Yates?). Because of this, I had extremely high expectations for this book, which actually made me a bit hesitant, but everything turned out quite splendidly, as I will begin discussing now.

If We Were Villains (abbreviated as IWWV for the rest of this review) centers on seven college theatre students in a program dedicated to studying and performing Shakespeare's many masterpieces. During their final year and while preparing for their production of "Julius Caesar," a tragedy occurs that forever alters the course of each person's life. The story starts out with Oliver, the protagonist, as he is just being released from prison.

As a debut author, M. L. Rio does an incredibly job at crafting an incredible involved, intricately told tale filled with strong characters and an enticing plot.

The beginning was a little rocky for me, as there was quite a large amount of exposition that bogged me down a bit. Each character was introduced in quite a bit of detail and in a manner that didn't seem to flow as well as it could have, but I had faith and kept on. Fortunately, this rockiness in the beginning completely flattened out and the rest of the book was pretty smooth sailing from there.

I loved the characters in IWWV. We have Oliver, Alexander, James, Richard, Meredith, Filippa, and Wren, and the story is told entirely in Oliver's first person narrative, which alternates between the present and his retelling of past events. At first, I was nervous about the fact that this group of friends consisted of seven different people. It's not that I don't like large casts, but I was worried that certain characters would fade into the background or would be too similar in voice and personality to be able to tell apart. My worries were needless, however, as each and every character had so much vitality and so many unique qualities that I had no problem telling one from the other.

Rio is clearly a gifted writer. Throughout this novel, there are beautiful descriptions of emotions and scenes that urged me to go back and re-read them, and Rio's use of foreshadowing is extremely artful and carefully done. I thought it was particularly interesting to have her character regularly having conversations and quoting lines from Shakespeare, because they really seemed to cement the impact and influence his works have had and would continue to have in each character's life. My only caveat with this, however, was that I felt that sometimes Rio was just a bit too heavy-handed with the Shakespeare dialogue, and I wouldn't have mind if it was toned down ever so slightly.

I definitely think that this book may have a slightly stronger impact on readers who are theatre students or also have a deep love of the works of Shakespeare. In fact, the love/obsession of Shakespeare in this book is something that I actually appreciated, because it showed me just how much Rio herself loves this man's work. Before I even knew this book existed, I was aware of her passion for the Bard, and I love how much it comes through. There is nothing more exciting and meaningful to me than being able to see an author's true passion for their subject really shine forth.

Overall, I recommend this book to any who love a little intrigue, strong character development, and/or anyone who loves books in the same genre as The Secret History. I've given it four stars!