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A review by librarychild
If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
I really don't ever review books beyond a simple star rating that I purely base on vibes and enjoyment, but this one is different. This book has an overwhelmingly high rate of 5 star ratings and I just don't see it. But if you did like this book, great! I am very happy for you! I am not here to shame anyone for their reading tastes. Read what you like! That being said, I was personally very disappointed and my issues with this book are numerous.
To list a few:
- The story was predictable
- It relied way too heavily on quotes. It was excessive and a lot of the time did nothing to further the plot.
- It felt like Meredith's only personality traits were being sexy and angry. Super two dimensional in my opinion, and honestly this goes for all the female characters. They did not feel fleshed out and sometimes I felt it was downright mysoginistic.
- The treatment of illnesses like drug addiction and eating disorders was not done in a way that felt purposeful to the plot or sensitive to readers.
- We get background info about the characters but most of it is never to be mentioned again. Felt unnecessary
- The date rape joke!! Unacceptable to me. Act 2 Scene 8. No thank you.
- The formating of dialogue as: 'Character name: "dialogue". Character name: "dialogue"' was distracting and felt lazy
And that's just what I can think of at the top of my head. I sort of regret not writing down every moment that made me feel this way while I was reading it. Was so close to DNFing it so many times.
So while the premise of the book sounded great to me in theory, I just can't justify anything over 2.5 stars.
To list a few:
- The story was predictable
- It relied way too heavily on quotes. It was excessive and a lot of the time did nothing to further the plot.
- It felt like Meredith's only personality traits were being sexy and angry. Super two dimensional in my opinion, and honestly this goes for all the female characters. They did not feel fleshed out and sometimes I felt it was downright mysoginistic.
- The treatment of illnesses like drug addiction and eating disorders was not done in a way that felt purposeful to the plot or sensitive to readers.
- We get background info about the characters but most of it is never to be mentioned again. Felt unnecessary
- The date rape joke!! Unacceptable to me. Act 2 Scene 8. No thank you.
- The formating of dialogue as: 'Character name: "dialogue". Character name: "dialogue"' was distracting and felt lazy
And that's just what I can think of at the top of my head. I sort of regret not writing down every moment that made me feel this way while I was reading it. Was so close to DNFing it so many times.
So while the premise of the book sounded great to me in theory, I just can't justify anything over 2.5 stars.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death
Moderate: Eating disorder and Drug abuse
Minor: Rape