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

 If We Were Villains 

By M.L.Rio (2017)

(428 pages Paperback)

Genre : Coming-of-age, Contemporary, Shakespeare, Drama, Murder Mystery, Suspense , Playacting.

Rating : 4/5 😃😃

The scenes are very vivid and brilliantly descriptive - they unfold before the eyes of the reader and the characters jump to life, out of paper. The emotions are raw and visceral. The story and the plot brought back visuals from 'The Secret History'by Donna Tartt and 'The Shawshank Redemption' by Stephen King. I thoroughly enjoyed both the books and the fondness is replicated here. I couldn't put the book down. I wanted to rip asunder the mystery and get to the bottom of the drama. 

The main characters of the play/story are the seven fourth year theater art students of Dellacher University. The main focus of their curriculum is to learn, memorize and enact the various Shakespeare plays. The tightly knit friends become obsessed with these plays and of the Shakespearean characters. They personify the various emotional extremes and find justification for their actions in the books they read and parts they play. When one of them turns into a ruthless bully and dictatorial in his violent treatment of the others, they unite and watch him sink to his death(like Julius Caesar). They are aware that one of them must have struck the death blow but don't enquire too much into identifying the murderer. The weeks and months following this death/murder are marked with each of them coming undone,  spiraling out of control with guilt refusing to remain suppressed. Where they are or whatever they are doing, they seem lost in their own inner world filled with whatever nightmares. Unknown to them, they are also surreptitiously watched by the police who didn't buy their innocence/accidental death story. The narrator of the story, Oliver, though seemingly untouched and stronger than the rest, hides incriminating evidence and confesses to the crime that everyone - including the cop - knows he didn't commit. He spends ten years of his life in prison and comes back to learn a deadly truth. There seems to be no end to his despair or is there ? 

There are many references to the several plays of Shakespeare and I felt that one needs to have a prior knowledge of them to follow or understand the motivations of the characters. I thought this is a handicap. I didn't understand the reason why Richard who has been one of the group has suddenly become belligerent and bullying? The decade of prison time seemed to hardly have made a dent on the character/emotional state of Oliver. What was the need for James to have left a secret note for Oliver and fake his own death at the end? Why couldn't he have waited for Oliver to return? 

I think M.L.Rio is a real and singular talent. I can't believe this is her debut novel - it is so good! I will look for her future works for sure! The ambience and the world building felt more like Historical England than Contemporary America. I liked it more for it !! 😀