Book Review: If We Were Villains by M. L. Rio

Rating: 10/10

Oh. My. God. This was THE most intense book I’ve ever read. Ever. Seriously, it was… a transcendental experience. Somehow, the author managed to make the scenes in which the characters were using Shakespeare’s words, not their own, devastating and rife with subtext. I felt like I understood how the words were conveyed and how the characters reacted.

Ok, so I’m going to back up now, though I’m not done gushing over this book yet. It’s set in a demanding Conservatory, where each year, students are cut from the college. Only seven students in the drama department, the main characters, survived the yearly purges to become seniors. So, for starters, super high stakes environment from the very beginning. I’m not going to go into much more plot detail, because MAJOR SPOILERS, but this book very much qualifies as dark academia, rife with murder and betrayal. Despite this, I see it as, above all, a story about love. The relationships in this book are all so intense that they practically leap off the page, and the characters are incredibly well-developed. While each character falls under a stereotype, they quickly prove to be very complex. Some of them, like Meredith, are limited while simultaneously being abetted by these stereotypes. Honestly, Meredith definitely gets the short end of the stick a fair bit. I’m certainly no actor, but I felt like I could truly understand the students, down to their all-consuming obsession with Shakespeare. Furthermore, though I actually managed to guess the ending after I read Act I (the book is divided into five acts), the story was still full of plot twists, mystery, and unexpected discoveries. I spent a significant amount of time while reading this book screaming- and not all of it was internal. I think my parents actually started to worry. Though I did have to take breaks from reading to process- the book is incredibly dramatic and impactful- I honestly loved the experience of reading this all-consuming book.