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A review by jwells
If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
Very similar book to The Secret History. I'm starting to wonder if this is a subgenre now, but my usual rule is that I need to find at least three books before I call something a subgenre. LOL
It's not the thriller aspects that I enjoy (the suspense, the murder, etc.), as much as the academic fantasy world. This one is, if anything, even better than the fantasy world of The Secret History, because it's slightly more convincing. It stretched credibility a little too far to have the 20-somethings fluently chatting in ancient Greek, but... we could have memorized all of Shakespeare by 22, couldn't we? And we could have had a college clique that also did, and constantly threw out perfectly apropos quotes from his plays, instead of a the actual friend group we had, who constantly threw out the same few quotes from The Princess Bride and Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Okay, no, it's just as far-fetched. It's funny how many books are like this. A lot of people who went to college still have a fantasy about how college should have been. See also Pamela Dean's Tam Lin. There's something kind of sad about it. An author builds this fantasy world about incredibly smart people who are unreasonably dedicated to the liberal arts at an unreasonably young age, and who form a sweet little found family to support each other's fascination. And then said author feels compelled to demonstrate the unhealthiness of the clique, by having them freaking murder someone. Because, no one who loves [Greek, Shakespeare, whatever] that much, at the age of 20, could possibly be a psychologically healthy person? I guess?
It's like a brief fantasy of what it would be like to love something as much as you wanted, and still have friends, a place to fit in , people who understand you. And then it's followed by: "Don't worry! I know That's Not Normal!! I'm not really one of those Obsessive Nerds!! See, I get that they are weirdos, I'll write them an awful, tragic ending, because Those Pretentious People come to bad ends!"
sigh
It's not the thriller aspects that I enjoy (the suspense, the murder, etc.), as much as the academic fantasy world. This one is, if anything, even better than the fantasy world of The Secret History, because it's slightly more convincing. It stretched credibility a little too far to have the 20-somethings fluently chatting in ancient Greek, but... we could have memorized all of Shakespeare by 22, couldn't we? And we could have had a college clique that also did, and constantly threw out perfectly apropos quotes from his plays, instead of a the actual friend group we had, who constantly threw out the same few quotes from The Princess Bride and Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Okay, no, it's just as far-fetched. It's funny how many books are like this. A lot of people who went to college still have a fantasy about how college should have been. See also Pamela Dean's Tam Lin. There's something kind of sad about it. An author builds this fantasy world about incredibly smart people who are unreasonably dedicated to the liberal arts at an unreasonably young age, and who form a sweet little found family to support each other's fascination. And then said author feels compelled to demonstrate the unhealthiness of the clique, by having them freaking murder someone. Because, no one who loves [Greek, Shakespeare, whatever] that much, at the age of 20, could possibly be a psychologically healthy person? I guess?
It's like a brief fantasy of what it would be like to love something as much as you wanted, and still have friends, a place to fit in , people who understand you. And then it's followed by: "Don't worry! I know That's Not Normal!! I'm not really one of those Obsessive Nerds!! See, I get that they are weirdos, I'll write them an awful, tragic ending, because Those Pretentious People come to bad ends!"
sigh
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Drug use, Toxic relationship, Blood, and Alcohol
Moderate: Violence
Minor: Eating disorder, Sexual content, and Vomit