REVIEW: If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio

“You can justify anything if you do it poetically enough.” - M.L. Rio

Honestly? A Dark Academia Wet Dream for Every (Former) Theatre Kid.

The story follows a group of drama students at a cult-like university in the United States of America. They are obsessed with Shakespeare and a very pretentious (normal for theatre kids) but generally happy bunch, until the borders between heroes and villains and lyric and life become blurry - And one of them ends up dead.

As a former theatre kid myself, I adored this book. A lot.

If We Were Villains definitely isn't perfect, by all means. I would've loved there to be more depth to characters like Wren and Alexander, for example, as well as more detail to Richard's "downfall". He was everyone's (flawed but nonetheless) good friend for three years before suddenly becoming a huge dick (so huge that his friends decide to LET HIM DIE) just because he didn't get one role while still playing the main character in a much bigger production? I wanted more context to that.

And Meredith? A beautiful girl being afraid of being just that, solving everything with sex? Alexander, playing the villain and getting into substance abuse? I can't decide if that's truly a weakness/laziness in the author's character design, or if it's supposed to be a hint towards the whole "get treated like XYZ and you become it" narrative and a criticism towards type casting.

As I said, there were some other things I wasn't too keen on, but enough with that! This book is special to me for several reasons, but I'll limit myself to five:

1. It romanticises theatre and theatre people without sugar coating. It captures perfectly the sense of superiority and the incredibly ANNOYING behaviour of "drama people" (myself included) bit also the beauty and what gives them life: Performing. The world is a stage.

2. The depiction of realistic interpersonal relationships: Are you in love with someone? Crushing on them? Lusting after? Hating? And there's never just one person, is there? One might get annoyed by the number of relationships in this book but I actually thought it to be rather realistic. Emotions are confusing and not every infatuation has to be love straight away.

3. James. What a beautiful downfall of a character. What a beautifully designed character in general. And what an utterly perfect take on homosexuality: Writing about it without making the story about it at. Effing. All.

4. The crime. I guessed early on who the "murderer" was but I was never 100% sure, and I was still intrigued the whole time. What a beautiful murder. What devastating consequences.

5. The Ending. Jesus Christ, the ending.

Again, I see a lot of the points people criticise about this book. But four stars wouldn't have done it justice, not for me anyways. What a beautiful, beautiful book. What a beautiful love letter to theatre.