Rachel Hawkins is an auto buy author for me and was so excited to be approved for The Villa. Unfortunately it was just ok. I really liked the plot, but the execution fell short. I did really enjoy the dual timelines and the musical artist element. I just did not enjoy the ending. It's still a super fast paced read, and would recommend people to read it themselves.

Chess and Emily have been friends forever. Chess is a successful self-help writer and Emily is a cozy mystery writer who is coming off a bad marriage. Chess proposes that they spent six weeks in Italy and Emily accepts. They travel to a villa where a musician was murdered in the 1970s. The story is told from dual timelines—Emily and Chess in present day and Mari, the murdered musician’s girlfriend, who writes about that fateful summer. I have read Rachel Hawkins before but this was my favorite. Though there are some brutal scenes and R rated language, all of it seems appropriate and necessary to the narrative. I thank NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this ARC.

The Villa by Rachel Hawkins

The Villa is a slow burning thriller story dealing with two time periods that end up meshing together. In 1974 three rock singers two writers and a 5th wheel come to Villa Aestas which a homicide takes place. Two best friends Emily and Chess who have known each other since being kids. They meet up at the Villa for Emily just recovering from illness and a divorce they meet to get their writing juices flowing again. This story alternates between timelines, Mari in the past and Emily in the present day.

I thought the creepiness of the house would of played more of a role in the story otherwise to me it just a villa a missed opportunity here for the house being part of the story more. It would have added to the story and I believe would have made the story better. Why talk about the Villa when the Villa isn't the story what happens in the Villa is.

The story was told through the eyes of Mari and Emily, the narrative alternates between the past in the 1970s and the present. I was bored with the narratives which made me not like the characters. I know the book was written within a story in a story that just did not work for me.

I know some people will love this book and for them I recommend it to them. I would like to read more from this author even though this one did not work for me. I felt some of the dialogue between characters became annoying. Just because I didn't like the book doesn't mean others shouldn't read this. This was a 2 star read for me.

Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for a free copy of The Villa for an honest review. All opinions expressed in this review are my own.

I've enjoyed Rachel Hawkins' work in the past, and "The Villa" was another fantastic novel. Centered around complicated relationships and the happenings in an Italian Villa, Hawkins seamlessly merges the past with the present, uncovering the truth behind a long-ag0 murder and current relationship issues between friends.
This was a fast, engrossing read that I lost sleep to finish - and found it to be totally worth it!

100 pages in was my first and only “oh my god” moment.. the first half is VERY SLOW I really did not want to finish this book but I’m glad I did. OBSESSED with the cover and can’t wait to read more Rachel Hawkins, as this is my first. Present POV was much more intriguing to read than past POV. Was not a fan of the ending at all ☹️

This story revolves around current and former guests staying at a picturesque Italian villa where
things aren’t as pleasant as they seem.

I had a really hard time getting through this book. I felt like the first 2/3rd of the story dragged on and left me feeling uninterested in the rest. I also struggled to connect with the characters, each of whom have their own toxic traits. The “friendship” between two of the main characters didn’t seem to be a friendship at all and left me wondering why they were even friends in the first place. I also didn’t like the chapters involving the 70’s timeline which were a bit dull and I found myself wanting to rush through them so I could get back to the current timeline.

The ending leaves you with some unanswered questions which was also a little disappointing.

Overall this book just wasn’t for me, but I do thank NetGalley for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of this book to review. The Villa follows writers and old friends Chess and Emmy on a whirlwind vacation to the picturesque Villa Aestas in the Italian countryside. But what had been planned as a writer's retreat between two friends takes a dark turn. This book had two of my absolute favorite book elements: multiple timelines and multiple different styles of writing. While the beginning was slow, the ending had me in a death grip for sure. Overall, a very strong thriller and definite hit for Rachel Hawkins.

Emily and Chess are both famous, successful writers, & they’re best friends since childhood. it’s become a toxic friendship. Chess is newly rich, Emily is newly divorced, & they decide to rent a house together for the summer in Italy to write. the house is the site of a past murder. structure of book alternates between past murder & current plot. started out strong in the beginning. middle dragged a bit. twist & ending made it all worth it. despite taking place in an Italian summer, not much sense of place unfortunately. somewhere between 3 or 4 stars. content warnings for murder, pregnancy, & toxic relationship(s).

Holy cow, I loved this! The parallel/dual timelines. The added media for depth and exposition. Chess is a fucking psycho, and I had a friend like her that I got rid of in my 20s. Such a quick read, gonna be a perfect beach read. I was totally angry at parts. Ugh so good

I loved this book and I couldn’t put it down!

I’m not sure exactly what made this so enjoyable for me, but I loved the storyline, the dual timelines, the mystery, the setting and the character development. There were so many characters that I couldn’t tell if I loved them or hated them, but either way, I still wanted to keep reading about them.

I will definitely be reading her next book!

Thanks NetGalley and publisher for the digital copy in exchange for my honest review!

Two best friends in their 30's - one now a celebrity - spend the summer in a rented villa in Italy where a murder took place in the 1970's. The Villa interweaves the story from the 1970's with the modern day story. I never connected with the 1970's story and although the modern day story was interesting, the friendship was also infuriating. This book didn't have the suspense that I'm looking for in a thriller but it did have an interesting twist.

Between the dual time storyline and the dark vibes, this was probably my favorite Rachel Hawkins. I loved the introduction with the bits of a famous horror novel written in the 70s.
Then we have two best friends, but they have grown apart. One girl famously rich and life is going well. The other recently blindsided by divorce and failing at her writing career.
They travel to Italy for the summer and find out that the horror novel was written in the same villa.
The story was pretty predictable, but I still enjoyed the read and all of the crazy characters.

The Villa is ‘thriller-meets-‘Daisy Jones and the Six’ and I’m here for it. I loved the back and forth between 1974 and present, and the way they intertwined. Well written, characters with enough believable flaws that you can’t tell who is the good guy.

Overall a slow burn, atmospheric thriller with unlikable characters and alternating time line between past and present. An examination of toxic relationships and friendships. The story was a bit underdeveloped and bordered on predictable. An easy enough read and held my interest but not anything ground breaking. Not a terrible book by any means I just would have liked it to be a bit more twisty and darker.

The Villa is a modern thriller examining what happens to a person who soaks for long enough in a cesspool masquerading as friendship. Toxic relationships abound in this dual timeline examining mysterious events at an Italian villa in the 1970s, and revelations a cozy mystery writer stumbles upon while staying at the very same place for the summer in contemporary times. The story was based in part upon the famous lakehouse stay of Mary Shelley, Byron et al in the early 1800s, and the birth of her Frankenstein manuscript. Based on this alone, I should have loved it.

And yet. Much like I experienced in the early pages of last year's Reckless Girls, I immediately felt dislike for the major characters in The Villa and began wishing bad things for them. But I didn't feel half the cathartic sensations that I felt as Girls reached its bloody climax, as this book lays all its cards on the table early on and you know most of what's going to happen even as it is just a blip on the horizon. The ending in the modern timeline, while unpredictable, was hot garbage to me, although I did appreciate the bitter twist at the end of the previous timeline.

There were also issues with the characters. For one thing, the Mary Shelley-esque parallel in the 1970s characters and their situation was... It was almost a literal transplanting of everything, just in the seventies. It was awful. A good retelling can change enough to make an idea its own while still remaining comfortably familiar, and this was terrible. Meanwhile, in the modern timeline's cast, you can practically smell the toxic vibes from the Chess character coming off the page; are people actually friends with self-help authors who quote passages from their own poisonously-optimistic books? I sure hope not. That character never got the comeuppance I felt necessary for my own relief as a reader, either.

I really stumbled over reading this. It was a slog despite the easy prose and what should have been an interesting premise. There were some compelling lines, and it was overall engaging enough that I didn't just drop it at forty percent, so The Villa earns a dispassionate, low-end 3 stars from me.

4+ stars

Wow, okay. This has been a fun read (and good distraction) while I’ve been at home sick for a couple days. I quite liked this book. I know I rated all three similarly, but while I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as The Wife Upstairs, I appreciated it more than Reckless Girls. I feel like the writer does a good job of creating intense relationships, whether they’re romantic or platonic, in her stories, and that’s a part of what pulls me in. The other part is a combination of the settings (I’ve said it before and will say it again- I’m a sucker for a good thriller set in a gothic building or on an isolated island) and the intriguing plots. This novel had twists and turns, some of which were pretty unexpected, including one that was thrown into the final pages, and I love that it kept me guessing. I tend to like books that switch between different characters’ perspectives but am generally less enthusiastic about ones that jump between time periods; in this case, though, it worked for me. I’m also a big fan of the cover design and art that has been used for the writer’s last three books; the colours and consistent styles are always part of what initially catches my attention. All in all, this one was a win for me. I can’t wait to see what she comes out with next!

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley and am voluntarily posting a review. All opinions are my own.

The Villa is an exceptional Gothic thriller, and much more in line with what I loved about Rachel Hawkins’ first thriller, The Wife Upstairs, as opposed to the And Then There Were None-inspired Reckless Girls. But given that this book, like TWU, reimagines titans of classic literature, giving them a more modern feminist reimagining, of course I ate this up.

I love how the narrative focuses heavily on two parallel narratives of sisterhood and friendship, and the things that complicate it. The 70s narrative is, as the blurb mentions, heavily inspired by the lives of Mary and Percy Shelley, her stepsister Claire Clairemont, and their friend Lord Byron. It’s funny how little had to be changed about the dynamics of the characters, given how “liberal” they were with sexuality for their time. Mari’s adulterous affair with Pierce and Noel’s with Lara, and the hints of something that had gone on between Pierce and Lara all feel realistic to their historical counterparts.

Mari is a compelling protagonist, and I love the gradual subtle revelations about Pierce’s character that result in her disillusionment with him, and how she uses her writing to provide catharsis for herself in the aftermath of the tragedy and give her power and agency back.

I wasn’t sure how to feel about the Emily and Chess storyline at first, but over time the connections and parallels between them and the Mari/Lara storyline became more apparent…and proceeded on an eerily similar path.

Initially, I was fairly certain I knew where the story was going, with it presumably debunking the popularly held belief of what happened. However, the twist goes in a different direction, but is in keeping with the overall intent of Mari’s character, and is also well foreshadowed in the commentary about her and her book in the present-day timeline.

This is a fast-paced, intriguing dual-timeline thriller, and I’d recommend it to anyone who enjoys historical thrillers or books inspired by literary or music history.

Thank you Net Galley and St. Martin's Press for this ARC!

This novel has alternating timelines within the same setting, a villa in Italy. Present day has two lifelong best friends reconnecting for a summer of writing and 1974 has two musicians, a writer, a stepsister, and a tag-along there for a summer supposed to be filled with writing music.

Both timelines show a lot of focus on spurring creativity as well as examining the things that lead us to success or failure and what our emotions could cause us to do.

The twists are predictable and the book wasn't as dark as I hoped it would be. Sure, there's some mystery but there's nothing over-the-top or hard to see coming.

I didn't like the ending particularly much. I feel like it took away from the mystery. But the book was still an enjoyable and easy read.

This has to be on my top 10 ever list! The characters were relatable, and the book ready easy but kept you wanting to not put it down. There was a little mystery, a little romance and a little fly by the seat of your pants. I will for sure be recommending this to all my reader friends and clients!

Thank to Netgalley for allowing me to read and review this book!

***Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for the ARC copy of The Villa which is set to be released on January 3rd, 2023. All opinions expressed in this review are my own.***

The Villa is a slow-burn, three dimensional story told in dual timelines about toxic relationships and a murder house that always remembers.

I loved the premise of this book and also really enjoyed the feminist vibes weaved throughout both the past and present stories.

If you're looking for a new entertaining popcorn thriller, this one is for you!