Read 2: September 24th, 2023

My feelings on If We Were Villains are complicated. So much of M.L. Rio's writing here is brilliant. The setting throughout the novel was decadently described and Rio has a knack for evoking atmosphere that deeply immersed me in the story. Further Rio's plotting while flawed in some ways kept me hooked all the way through the story. But where this book falters for me is its absences.

Its first absence was on a genre level. If We Were Villains doesn't explore the toxic aspects of academia thoroughly enough to truly live up to the project of Dark Academia as a genre. While I loved the vibes of Dellecher, from the chalk-dusted classrooms to the ominous lake, Rio didn't say much about the institution as a whole. I'm not saying she should have added lectures about the evils of the Ivory Tower but in a story like this the institution should be as much of an antagonistic force as our characters. Rio seemed to treat Dellecher as a backdrop the plot happened in front of rather than a force that informed the action of the story. I can't help but wonder how much more interesting this story could have been if we saw administration protecting Richard despite his documented violent tendencies, if we saw social consequences for Oliver's fall in class status, or if the typecasting central to the conflict of the novel being more pointedly a result of systematic bias. Or really anything that would've added more menace to Dellecher than a couple of intense acting exercises.

Another major absence were the characters. If We Were Villains is told from the limited POV of Oliver Marks, aka the most boring protagonist in history. I can see what Rio was trying to do here. Oliver is cast as a secondary player on stage, so elevating him to protagonist is a subversion. But that thematic cleverness didn't make him any less boring. But more significant than Oliver's blandess is his limited view point. I can't help but be disappointed that we never have true access to the rest of the cast. One of the central themes of the story is how much are we like the roles we are assigned. But it just couldn't be effectively answered or explored through the POV Rio chose. Oliver is deeply incurious about the internal lives of everyone around him. He barely seems to know the people he's supposedly been besties with for four years and never asks questions or gains insights that could lead the reader to a deeper understanding of any member of the cast.

The limits of Oliver's POV shines through the most when considering the female characters of If We Were Villains. Oliver throughout sees women as the property of himself or other men and never demonstrates care about their inner lives. To Oliver the women in his life are either objects of desire, people to protect, or people that mother him. While it's perfectly fine to write misogynistic protagonists and the narrative doesn't have to finger wag at them to prove that the author knows their behavior is bad. When all we see in our female character is them being secondary to the men around them I think it's fair to want more from the story. When Meredith is aggressively sexualized or used as a chip in sexual power plays, when Wren does nothing but sigh and faint or play peacekeeper, when Filippa is functionally a non-entity for the majority of the story I think it's fair to ask if the story, by never diving deeper into its female characters, is functionally reproducing the mysogyny of its protagonist. Sure, you can hand wave it as commentary on archetypes. But if every single woman in your novel ultimately has nothing to do but be a bit player in a man's story and isn't even given a voice to say something about that its fair to ask if the author is effectively telling a story that explores the archetypes women are forced into.

This bothers most of all because it feels so far from the women Shakespeare writes. I'm not trying to recast Shakespeare as a feminist icon but he in so many of his plays crafts fascinating, rich portraits of female characters. Many are subject to mysogyny and viewed through the gaze of men who want to possess them, but through it all, so many of these women demonstrate a rich interiority that all of Rio's women lack.

My last disappointment in this novel is its absence of queerness. Rio's hesitancy to simply write a gay story baffled me when I first picked up If We Were Villains and continues to perplex me now. Rather that diving into the repressed homoerotic yearning between James and Oliver Rio uses Meredith and Wren as proxy objects of desire in a convoluted love pentagon. This builds on my point about how degrading and shallow Rio's representation of women is but further, it leads to a very antiquated queer narrative. One where queerness must be teased out by the reader in subtext rather than just demonstrated on page. To be clear I didn't need James and Oliver to have sex on page or even kiss, but the lack of even time spent alone together throughout the novel was strange. The books spent more time telling us that James and Oliver were super close than actually demonstrating that closeness. And if this book is ultimately a tragic love story between the two

if Richard's murder is partly motivated by James being pushed to action by Richard's homophobic comments

I truly can't understand why Rio didn't make that a bigger part of the narrative.

While I was talked down from giving this 1 star by my book club I can't help but be deeply disappointed in this story. Rio is a solid writer and the bones of If We Were Villains could have propped up a far more interest story than the one we actually got.

Read 1: December 19th, 2019
3 stars

I have more feelings than I have words to describe my relationship with If We Were Villains. I absolutely adored every facet of this novel that wasn’t the actual plot. The setting: enchanting, the characters: absolutely fantastic, but the direction of the story was something I was exactly primed to dislike.

If We Were Villains is a dark academia murder mystery following a tight-knit group of friends in their final year at a prestigious fine arts college well known for their entirely Shakespeare centric theatre programme. Our protagonist Oliver recounts his final year at university ten years after the fact and unravels. Let's start with...

 What I Liked

The setting of this story is absolutely gorgeous. That small-town college vibe was present and excellent. I loved the forest, I loved the university, but what Rio captured best in this novel was the fanaticism for the Bard within the students. I wanted to go to Dellecher, walk its halls, see its plays and be in its classes surrounded by people so completely taken by Shakespeare. And that’s saying something because before I read this book is only ever read two Shakespeare plays, but after it, I wanted to read them all.

Some may find this story and these characters painfully pretentious, I mean they casually spout Shakespeare in normal conversation, but honestly, I don’t think it would be an accurate description. Rio conveyed their true passion for Shakespeare and his works. The characters never felt like they were spouting off lines from Hamlet to sound clever, it always felt natural and genuine. You could sense their absolute love for these stories and it was infectious.

Rio really sold me on the heightened emotions of the story. I can see some finding it all unbearable melodrama, but it was absolutely captured by the drama and angst of it all.

I fell in love with the characters of this book and instantly bought into their relationships with each other. Rio works with archetypes to initially characterize the seven students at the centre of the novel. This works to quickly establish their roles in the story and their relationships with each other. Rio expands on these characters well. Now on to...

What I Disliked

(NB: This section goes into spoilers)

From the moment Oliver and James appeared on the page together I knew they were in love and hoped the story would explore their relationship in detail. I had the sense that this story would ultimately be tragic and was ready for a sad ending, but what I wanted first and foremost was for James and Oliver’s relationship to be thoroughly explored. However, despite my hopes, it felt as if the book was circling around their relationship rather than actually exploring it.

I was absolutely frustrated that instead of being a straightforward tragic romance between Oliver and James the bulk of this story centres around Oliver’s relationship with Meredith. There is a lot of underlying angst about the ambiguous feelings Oliver and James have towards each other, but these feelings remain unaddressed and ambiguous until the very end of the novel. Rio doesn’t even allow for Oliver and James to have one scene, one moment of understanding between the two and I hated that.

On the topic of Meredith, her character felt like an obstacle placed into the story to build conflict rather than a fully realized person within the narrative. While I feel she was fleshed out and given moments of light exploration throughout the story, I never felt like she ever broke past her archetype of “the whore”. To an extent felt like her only purpose in the story was to be passed between various male characters. I’m usually one for a good angsty love triangle, but instead of being entertaining I found it really annoying.

Honestly, all the female characters in this story felt like props for the various male characters and were never given any scope outside of that. They were never given anything to do outside of be in relationships with the male characters and ignite their possessiveness. While I understand this story is about Oliver, and his biased perspective is the one we see the narrative through It would have been nice for Meredith, Filippa and Wren to be given something else to do in the story.

I had a real distaste for the epilogue of this story. I feel like any story that feels the need to have two major twists in the last chapter has to be reworked and honestly both of those twists felt like a spit in the face. They both show Rio’ s disinterest in actually engaging with Oliver and James’s relationship and the fact that they never not even once had an honest conversation about how they felt for each other on-page was actively upsetting.

So those are my thoughts on If We Were Villains. If I’m being honest none of this is set in stone and someone really persuasive could change my mind about my negative feelings towards the plot. This is probably the most conflicted.