A review by margueritestjust
If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio

dark mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Definitely a quick read.  So much of what happens in this book is a disaster waiting to boil over, and it's really delightfully gripping to watch as it does happen.

This will get very spoiler-y, very quickly.  And as I consider this book to be more plot-heavy, reliant on the plot to take its readers in (following Aristotle's Poetics, nice one there), I'm going to hide a lot of them to try to give new readers looking at this review the chance to read it for themselves, as I do recommend it.

I have to say, it did throw me that it was Richard who was killed.  I was expecting him to kill James and that would be that.  It was the most obvious answer to the tension, perhaps to obvious from the author's point of view.  It also made for an interesting quandary in the latter half of the book - Richard was without a doubt, the most unlikeable, and violent character, and by killing him off, we had to shift our attentions to who could have killed him - someone we would most likely find infinitely more likeable.  I did guess that it was James pretty quickly in - but I didn't want it to be true, and so that helped to propel me forward, when the action lulled.  While Oliver pointed out that the time after Richard's death didn't feel like a denouement, it sort of did seem that way to me as a reader, and I think that could have been helped by bringing up the idea of Richard's killer sooner.


Still, I think the core aspect of this book is best presented in an argument that the seven have in a class discussing Julius Caeser - what matters more: that Caesar dies, or that it's his friends who kill him?  Even though the story still holds out as a whodunit until the end, it's not really about Richard's death at all.  It's about why he was killed, and how it affects the six remaining.  I think Rio was really wise in still preserving the whodunit aspect, not disclosing the identity of Richard's killer until the end, as the book would have lost steam otherwise, but even though I knew who had done it from a few chapters after it had happened, it still kept me drawn in, which is why I felt a little more cheated from the character development of several of the secondary characters.  Poor Wren hardly caught a break this whole book and yet also never really developed as a character.  #Justice for Wren.


On another note, it was just very funny to me when Oliver finally realized he had a crush on James, and I just had to sit there and go "Boy, you really should've realized your bi crisis back when he was in the shower and you handed him his towel."  Anyone who's read this book....you know what I'm talking about.  i have to confess it did make me smile.  It was incredibly obvious, but I suppose I can forgive it, since it was his bi awakening (no complaints here, as I'm also bi.  Furthermore, I really enjoyed the development of their relationship, even if it never really was "consummated" until the end (and even that's debatable), as adding Meredith and Wren into the situation really complicated things.  Who in this book isn't having revenge sex?  (Albeit mercifully unspecific and non-graphic revenge sex).  Filippa and Alexander for the WIN.


Perhaps the funniest part of this book is how nobody thinks that maybe they should call the police.  About anything.  Or even inform their teachers.  Or go get help from a therapist. 

"Oh, yeah, we're just watching this classmate of ours become increasingly erratic, and not tell anybody that he tried to kill one of our friends, then continues to be physically abusive towards that friend, and also all of us, and also his girlfriend.  Also when our other classmates begin to act erratic and also violent, we'll just kind of sit and watch as that happens, too." 

Granted, the police as an organization overall exists without honor or justice, and James gives sort of a reason for not telling Frederick and Gwendolyn......but.  Every time these seven students hurtle towards danger, they don't really have a plan to solve it.  This story is meant to be a tragedy, though, (modeled after Shakespeare's) so even though I frequently wondered out loud why they just didn't tell someone about the things going on - and I asked this every ten pages or so - I am somewhat able to forgive it.  It still definitely lost this book points, though.

I'm also not sure what to make of Meredith - the setup of her character seems very yawn to me, and even though the conflict presented there is between accepting the "femme fatale" sex object image or her fear over being considered nothing more than pretty, there's very little exploration of the latter, and it raises the question why bring it up at all if you weren't going to develop it.  She serves to be a barrier between
Oliver and James
but she spends the entire book being a love interest, only slightly delving into her background and personality.  That's somewhat of a fault overall of the book - characters aren't quite as fleshed out as maybe I'd like them to be - I ADORE Filippa, but also, #Justice for Filippa - but it all ties back into the premise, that all of these archetypes that have been superimposed onto themselves sometimes become a part of them.  That does raise an interesting dilemma: if you are judged and put into a box like that, will you inevitably come to fit that role?

Also I just can't get over how often they quote Shakespeare.  I'm literally a theatre major and I can't believe that seven people all just quote the Bard for any circumstance.  I'd forgive one character if it was perhaps a quirk, or if it was used more sparingly.  The painful yoga and calling your professors by their first names, though?  Spot on.

I'm interested in reading more of Rio's work - I hear she has another novel in the works - though I wish she'll spend a little more time in creating complexity in her secondary characters.  Still, this was gripping enough even with the assorted nonsense, and definitely has fascinating themes that are interjected into the text, and cause greater thought and discussion, which I don't always find in books as much (though contemporary dark academia isn't my comfort zone and this is in fact my first foray into it, so perhaps this is more a staple of the genre).  I'd recommend it for sure.
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