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Book Review: If We Were Villains
Jul. 18th, 2021 08:20 amM. L. Rio’s If We Were Villains was described to me as “like The Secret History,” which is true: it’s a book about a tight-knit group of college students, Shakespearian actors in this case, who murder one of their friends. It’s also somewhat misleading: is anything REALLY like The Secret History? Surely this comparison is setting us all up for disappointment.
And it does lack The Secret History’s gleeful willingness to make its protagonists horrible people (charming as hell! But rotten at the core) who murder to protect themselves from the consequences of their own earlier vile actions. When the murder occurs in this book, it’s pretty much self-defense: the group is protecting itself from a member who has grown violently erratic and already caused some pretty serious physical harm.
The comparison also undersells the queer subtext of If We Were Villains, which culminates ( spoilers )
Anyway, the book clearly has some creaky plot problems, BUT I really enjoyed it. Highly recommend if you like murder college students, murder gays, or copious quotations from Shakespeare.
And it does lack The Secret History’s gleeful willingness to make its protagonists horrible people (charming as hell! But rotten at the core) who murder to protect themselves from the consequences of their own earlier vile actions. When the murder occurs in this book, it’s pretty much self-defense: the group is protecting itself from a member who has grown violently erratic and already caused some pretty serious physical harm.
The comparison also undersells the queer subtext of If We Were Villains, which culminates ( spoilers )
Anyway, the book clearly has some creaky plot problems, BUT I really enjoyed it. Highly recommend if you like murder college students, murder gays, or copious quotations from Shakespeare.
