Hello everyone! I hope you are doing ok. Today you will be reading about our collective review for If We Were Villains by M. L. Rio. This review will be different from previous ones. We are trying something new and we hope you enjoy it. Don’t hesitate to comment your thoughts!!
Here’s a little summary of the book:
After spending ten years in prison, Oliver is finally free. But the detective on his case just retired and he wants one thing from Oliver : the truth. What happened ten years ago that got Oliver into jail. Ten years ago, there were 7: Meredith, Oliver, James, Alexander, Richard, Wren and Fillipa. Until there were only 6 of them....
Rating wise, our opinions differ. For me, it was a solid 9/10 and it if weren’t for the ending, I would have given it a 10/10. It became a favourite of mine, for sure. Solene would put a 7,5/10 for this book. It was objectively a great book, just not her favourite.
Now, if you’re here for some detail, buckle up, here we go :
We wanted to read this book because it was considered to be a pillar from the Dark Academia genre. The latter is something we wanted to try for a long time. This book was also trending on Tiktok and we were seeing it everywhere. We had this book on our Collective Review TBR for a long time, maybe 3 years at this point and it was time to finally read it. I had a physical copy of the book for a long time, next to my bedside table and Solene bought the book on her Kindle. Then we started reading the book.
In terms of expectations, we did not really have any because we had seen mixed reviews for this book. It was supposed to be long and very complicated to read. It was called “an ode to Shakespeare” and we were intrigued to say the least. We both had seen or read some Shakespeare plays but we were not, by any definition of the term, experts, and apparently this book had a lot of foreshadowing if you knew Shakespearian plays.
Story & Writing style
After the first couple of chapters, we already had different feelings about the book. I really enjoyed it and was hooked from the beginning. I could not stop reading. This book really helped with my reading slump. On the other hand, Solene did find the writing style very nice but thought the book was quite full of itself and pompous at times. She found the Shakespearian bits quite confusing (which, she says, probably means that she needs to read her classics). We both enjoyed reading the book and we read it quite fast even though it was around 400 pages but we were immersed in the story. However, we did not enjoy the book the same way.
Characters
In terms of characters, I was very invested in them and related to some of them. Filippa was our favourite character and Richard was my least favourite for obvious reasons… On the contrary, Solene found the characters not that relatable. However, we agree that the characters are very well written and that even though they have to be a little bit stereotypical for the purpose of the story, they still had their own flaws and strengths and they felt very three dimensional.
Is this book for you ?
We would recommend this book for sure but not to everyone.
This book is perfect if you love Shakespeare and well written books. If We Were Villains by M. L. Rio is an ode to literature. It can be a little pompous and boring sometimes but it is well written with interesting characters and a coherent story.
Since there are no asterisks and explanations for the Shakespeare references, be ready to be lost sometimes - you’re about to be humbled by a book if you’re like us.
The aftermath
In terms of the Collective Review for us, it really helped choose our next books differently. We wanted the same feeling for the rest of the book club; we wanted to stop reading books we hated and feel forced to finish a book we don’t like.
After this book, I went straight into another buddy reading with a friend, reading Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid while Solene tried to read A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson but she ended up DNFing (Did Not Finish) the book. She also read a philosophical book about Spinoza (Le Miracle Spinoza - Frédéric Lenoir)
Though this was meant as an ode to Shakespeare, it somehow almost felt like an illustration of humanity’s darkest, most twisted traits at times. That’s perhaps what makes this such a great book - the fact that although we know it is fiction, it somehow feels just a little bit too real.
“You can justify anything if you do it poetically enough”
Thank you for reading this collective review. I hope you liked the new format. We just wanted to try something different for once and this book felt like the right moment to do it. For the book club, the next book we read together was Burning Idol by Rin Usami and we also read The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes so stay tune for the next review !
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