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A review by lightsaber
If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio
adventurous
dark
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
I feel like IWWV would have been better serviced as a dark academia romantic drama than the thriller it tries to be. I much preferred the first half to the second one.
My critiques (spoilers)!
All critiques aside I had a lot of fun reading the book and I finished it in a handful of days. As an ex-theatre kid who loves Shakespeare and the dark academia aesthetic, it was fun to read a book that leaned so much into that. But it's certainly not the best thing ever written, and I wish it knew what it wanted to be: a tragic romance or a mystery. It gives up somewhere in the middle, and that's why the first half is superior to me.
My critiques (spoilers)!
- Richard is an unfailingly one note villain, so much to the point that I felt flabbergasted by the decision to just let him die. He has an ego and he's mean? Have you MET a theatre kid who got main roles one after another? They're literally all like that. I dunno. It felt like a little of a jump to go from "he's our egotistical bestie" to "yeah let's let him die in the lake."
- Frankly I think the second half of the story would be much more interesting from Wren's POV. She was Richard's COUSIN. And yet she barely features at all after Richard dies. I wish the book had been about her.
- I don't care what Oliver and the author have to say about Meredith, it is painfully obvious that she is just a halfway point for Oliver and James's more realized affections, and her character is diluted down to just the bare essence of "sex appeal" to get in the way of Oliver and James's more "magnetic" attraction. Disappointing.
- This book really begins to feel like it wants so badly to be a dark academia Brokeback Mountain towards the end, but it can't quite center itself around the drama of, oh I don't know, Richard being dead, and it's more about Oliver trying to fulfill a niche in James's life he wants to fulfill but isn't aware he wants to. Hence my "I think this would have been a better romantic drama than the mystery thriller it is" comment.
- Honestly? I hated Oliver by the end. We aren't given enough meat of his family to really understand why he despises them so much and his callous attitude towards his sister's EATING DISORDER really turned me off from him. Meredith calls him "good" but then he makes comments to his sister about throwing up her dinner and he throws a fit over his sister getting treatment. It made it extremely hard to want to root for him, at least for me. Sure, he doesn't feel like he fits in, but it doesn't seem like there's enough motivation there for it to feel like his family is just needlessly cruel to him, and he comes off as spoiled to me.
All critiques aside I had a lot of fun reading the book and I finished it in a handful of days. As an ex-theatre kid who loves Shakespeare and the dark academia aesthetic, it was fun to read a book that leaned so much into that. But it's certainly not the best thing ever written, and I wish it knew what it wanted to be: a tragic romance or a mystery. It gives up somewhere in the middle, and that's why the first half is superior to me.