4 ⭐️ Being a big fan of Rachel Hawkins I was super excited to receive an ARC of The Villa. This may have been my favorite of her thrillers yet! The atmosphere was wonderful, and I found myself connecting with Emily super quickly. The story within the story really helped to keep my attention as well.

So much happened so fast near the end that I can definitely see myself wanting to do a reread when the book officially releases to make sure I caught everything!

Thanks so much to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the advanced copy of this book!

Now I can’t decide if this book or the Wife Upstairs in my favorite Rachel Hawkins?!

I’m a sucker for a 60’s/70’s historical fiction. Part of this book is set in that time period, swapping back and forth between past and present kept me entertained. The parallel mystery was interesting and I loved that the end left just a bit to the imagination.

Emily and Chess have been friends since they were young but have grown apart since then. Chess plans a 6 week to a beautiful villa in Italy where they can both work on the books they're writing. Emily needs a break from her life and needs inspiration to finish her book. She's recovering from a mysterious illness, mourning her divorce and facing financial troubles. The villa was a crime scene in the 1970's when a person died inside. In alternating chapters, Emily struggles to complete her book and then decides to write a new book based on the villa's history and Mari in the 1970's describes how she, her boyfriend and sister join a friend to stay at the villa. “Houses remember.”

Thank you netGalley for letting me review this book! I found it very entertaining and a page turner. This author is new to me and I plan to read more books by this author. The ending surprised me!!

In 1974 in Orvieto, Italy at Villa Rosato. a murder took place.
The Victim Pierce Sheldon- married but has a girlfriend
Mari Godwick- Pierce's girlfriend and wrote the famous Horror novel Lilith Rising, while staying at the Villa.
Lara Larchmont- singer and has written the album Aestas- about her stay at Aestas..
John Dorcherster-Johnnie who wants to become a musician
Noel- famous singer.

Present day
Chess- a self help novelist
Emily- who writes cozies and going through a divorce.

Chess invites Emily to Italy with her in hopes that both of them will be inspired to write and have some girlfriend time.
While staying at the villa (formally Rosato) Emily finds the book Lilith Rising and the book inspires her to write again not about her cozies but about the people who actually stayed there. She starts asking questions to people who were around that time. Most people say that the house is cursed and she is better off not knowing what Actually happened that night in 1974. A mystery that Emily plans to dig into.

#NetGalley #TheVilla

While overall this is a pretty subpar thriller, it still has some great aspects- good characters, storylines that intertwine in a interesting way, and a wonderful setting (who doesn’t love Italy?!). Overall I felt the story just wasn’t edited as I t was super repetitive, an impossibly slow burn, and I never became emotionally involved therefore didn’t care what happened. I wish the story had matched the beautiful cover of the book.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

The Villa, by Rachel Hawkins, is a book that sucks you in and doesn't let go!

Told in alternate timelines, the novel tells the story of a Villa in Italy and the experiences that two sets of girls had there. The novel alludes to the intrigue and scandal of rock and roll, as well telling the story of a bond between friends and sisters.

I don't want to give anything away, but I thought the whole thing was extremely well written. I was interested in both timelines and felt the story really had a satisfying conclusion.

I'd recommend The Villa to fans of Daisy Jones and the Six.

2.5 stars
This book was very slow going at first and tool me a long time to get into. It did pick up some at the end but the conclusion wasn't satisfying. I found the twists to be predictable and I didn't particularly enjoy any of the characters.

In The Villa, Rachel Hawkins once again gives the readers a stunning, suspenseful, and thrilling novel that will keep you on the edge of your seat. I seriously couldn't put this book down and read it in one night.

The Villa follows the lives of two women in two different time periods who both stayed at the same villa in Orvieto, Italy. The main character, Emily, is on a journey to write her next novel after a rough breakup with her husband and after recovering from a debilitating unknown illness. Emily joins her childhood best friend, Chess, on a writers retreat to Orvieto, where they stay at Villa Aestas, a beautiful holiday home with a haunting history. 40 years prior, a horrific murder occurred at the villa, a murder where the details surrounding it are still unknown and shrouded in mystery. Emily becomes drawn into the life of Mari, a young woman who lived at the villa during the time of the murder. Throughout Emily's stay, she begins to discover that there is much more to the story than a murder, and as she get's closer to discovering the truth, she begins to realize that her best friend has more secrets than she originally realized, and that the villa may claim another victim before her trip ends.

This book sucked me in from the very beginning and had me second guessing myself the entire time. I loved the dual POV of the two women in two different times. This book had an incredible atmosphere and was very descriptive, making me feel like I was right there at the villa with Emily.

Highly recommend if you like mysteries, unreliable narrators, multiple timelines and POVs, and twisted secrets.

Please note I did receive a free ARC from the publisher in exchange for a honest review :)

Houses remember is such a fitting opening line that really threads together both stories in this book. This book was full of secrets and relationships that all had so much depth to them. I could picture this as a movie the whole time if was reading it. The jumps between timelines was easy to follow, too.

A beautiful Italian villa. A famous murder. Told in dual timelines, The Villa plunges readers into two strained summers, decades apart. One with the rocks stars and the drugs that led to a tragic death. The other with two best friends, neither being quite truthful.

This is probably my favorite Rachel Hawkins book yet. The Villa is a character unto itself. The pacing is good and I really was caught off guard (in a good way) by a couple of the end pieces. Like Hawkins’s other novels, there is a strong element of female empowerment in the story. However, unlike in some of her other works, I feel she did a good job of developing some of the male characters throughout to give the story more depth and believability, at least in the “historical” timeline.

Overall, this is a solid read that any fans of Hawkins’ work will be glad to read!

"What kind of person hate-reads their best friend’s books?"

Emily isn't exactly living her best life--freshly divorced, her ex sicking his lawyers on her money, deadlines slipping by without manuscripts, readers upset over plots, finances dwindling, and her mind and body ill. Her best friend since grade school, however, absolutely is--two bestsellers, an ever growing audience, money to burn, and that effortless positivity that seems to radiate off her. After meeting up for their annual lunch, Chess proposes a plan . . . They go on vacation. To Italy. To Villa Aestas. To a Murder house!

The story weaves the two tales--Emily and Chess with Marci and her friends back in 1974 when the murder took place. The past is intertwined with various sources that reported on, documented, or otherwise told of and shared the murder of Villa Aestas.

It's riveting, engaging, intriguing, and mysterious. Shocking twists and explosive secrets. And all along the story isn't what we're led to believe . . . I gobbled this up. And I recommend it to everyone. A phenomenal read that kept me up way past my bedtime.

4.5 stars rounded up. I loved the dual story/timelines and the switch from Emily's story to newspaper articles, podcast transcript, and Mari's diary really helped make this a fast paced mystery/thriller for me. The Villa felt immersive and kept my attention the whole way through. While I did see many plot points/twists coming, I definitely did not anticipate the ending. I loved this book and can't wait to see what Rachel Hawkins writes next!

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I really struggled to get into this book. I love the chapter about Emily and Chess but found myself not caring about Mari. The chapters were so drawn out and I quickly lost interest. I have really love Rachel Hawkins books in the past but this one did not draw me in.

This book very much so reads like a Rachel Hawkins thriller — and with that comes the good and the bad. There is that trademark relatable, only partially likeable narrator that drives the story forth and makes the book a unique kind of thriller for the millennial audience. However, some of the misses of Hawkins’ previous books recur in this one as well, mainly an unfulfilling ending (for the modern day timeline) that is clearly intending to be feminist but instead feels ungratifying, taints parts of the book in hindsight, and seems anything but empowering to the female main character.
This book features a modern day timeline as well as a past timeline. For me the past timeline was much stronger and more engrossing, and was a really fascinating reimagining of already interesting historical events. The parallels between the two timelines are clear, notably with Lara and Chess acting as mirrors of eachother. However, while Lara still managed to be realistically flawed and sympathetic, for me Chess just read as one-dimensional and frustrating, all the more so when there was no real resolution for her actions.
Many of the twists were predictable but the twist of the past timeline still made it a shocking and fascinating read, even if the modern timeline created more frustration than it did empowering, as it appears was the author’s intention.

Oh my gosh. I just finished this and my head is still spinning. There were so many twists and turns, and Rachel Hawkins covered every scope of emotion possible in one book. One I started, I couldn’t stop!

“Houses remember” Emma is a cozy mystery writer who is behind on her latest book. She can’t write the latest in the series because the MMC is as based on her husband, who just happened to leave her (while she was extremely sick, no less) She hears from her best friend from 4th grade, Chess, who happens to be a super famous self help guru now. Chess suggests they go off to Italy and stay in an amazing Villa, her treat.

As Emma discovers herself there, she also starts to be pulled in a new direction by the history of the house. In the 70’s it was the scene of a terrible tragedy, and Emma is hooked on trying to figure out what really happened. She is writing again, but definitely not what she has been. It is told in two timelines, the first from the 1970s, and the second present day. They glide along through the summer, 1970s full of drugs, sex, rock n roll, and a murder while the present day is full of mystery, anger, and betrayal. Rachel Hawkins used the two timelines brilliantly, and had me staying up to finish it.

Great story! Appreciate the two intertwining stories that come to a surprising and satisfying conclusion! Only my second Rachel Hawkins but will read the rest. Wonderful Italian setting and solid character development. Must read'

Thank you Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for this ARC in exchange for my honest review!

I really enjoyed this book! For a thriller I expected something a little more immersed in a current mystery so I was surprised to realize that the plot focuses more on unearthing a past mystery and connecting it to creative works of art; but I found this idea to be much more refreshing and inspiring than what I was originally expecting. The pace was also slower than I expected for a thriller, but it didn’t bother me because I felt the pace worked fell with the setting being an Italian villa, in the sense that a summer morning on a vacation can be a relaxed slow burn.

The characters weren’t necessarily likable (god I hated Chess) but relatable nonetheless. I especially loooved the parallel timelines (I am such a sucker for books that do this). There were a lot of similarities and convergences between Mari and Emily and it was really fascinating to volley their perspectives back and forth, but to also see Emily’s perspective in relation to Mari’s. The media snippets were also fascinating and really reminiscent of TJR’s books, but I enjoyed them in this book more than I did in TJR’s..

A really quick read that also explores the idea of what it means to support women’s independence and creativity when that creativity stems directly from something so brutal and morally debatable (but nonetheless supporting the women anyway because all the men in this book were awful). The back to back twists near the end genuinely surprised me and I wickedly love the idea of Emily believing she discovered the truth of what happened that night, when really the truth died along with everyone in that house. 4.5 stars rounded to 5 because why not!

The Villa was an excellent captivating read. I loved everything from the creepy setting to the flashbacks into the past and the excerpts of “Lilith Rising.” The writing was excellent and the characters were fascinating. Rachel Hawkins is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors and I can’t wait to read more from her.

"Houses Remember"

Love this author. Loved the cover.

The storyline was intriguing and I did enjoy reading it. But the amount of characters and different time lines kept me from not fully embracing either storyline fully. The characters were dynamic and the setting inspiring-I wanted more of the actual setting. It was an interesting mystery that combined toxic friendships and a gothic setting.

This is not my favorite of her books, but overall I enjoyed it and will read her others. She is a great writer.

Oh holy shit - this book!! The Villa pulled me in immediately, demanding my attention and time due to the writing and the terrific pacing of the story.

This is two stories in one book, a dual timeline and both timelines are equally compelling. I am notoriously picky when it comes to books like this, and I so very greatly enjoyed my reading of this that I am wholeheartedly recommending it, and hoping you like it as much as I did. Because, wow - I didn’t want to stop reading this one and kept thinking about it when I wasn’t reading it. I finished this over a weekend and really just can’t say enough about it. It was a seriously fun domestic drama.

Okay, Em and Chess’s ending? It fell a bit flat for me, which was a little disappointing but I stand by my absolute recommendation of this one because it’s compulsively readable.