If We Were Villains

This was a fabulous read.

The tension and the depiction of the characters were gripping me all the way through, the inner workings and the suspense of the protagonist Oliver were almost touchable for me. The denouement remained effectively open until the end, though I had some suspicions that turned out to be partly true. Still I was again and again surprised by the developments.

The idea of setting this at a theatre school and making the characters all theatre students that were practicing and performing for their plays was genius. Their performances wonderfully blended in into the rest of the story and the author did a superb job in bluring the borders between their acting and their genuine actions, whereby it was never certain what was real and what was only part of the plays.

I also appreciated the plenty insights into theatre school and acting practices, which was a world previously unknown to me.

"...violence has to come from a place of violent feeling or the audience won't believe it."

For a genre I rarely read about plays I've never watched/read, this was incredibly engaging. Oliver is part of a group of fourth year drama students who were very good friends, up until they very much weren't. We're taken along with this group as they navigate their final year at Dellecher Classical Conservatory and get to know them as they work on studying for various roles. One of them turns up dead, however, and the group starts to fall apart in dramatic fashion.

I liked the dual viewpoints of this book especially. It's from the point of view of Oliver looking back on events with a detective who worked the case, so we get present day scenes with Oliver and Detective Colbourne and past events with Oliver and his friend group. Oliver was imprisoned for the murder and was just released as the book opens, but did he do it?

The book is a bit of a slow burn, but I appreciated getting to know these students and having them matter to me before the murder occurs. The inclusion of lines from plays and dramas was fitting for the setting, and I thought were really well done and chosen. The ending was almost a miss for me, but the rest of the book was such a trip that anything else was just an incredibly minor point.

I've never been a drama student and don't derive pleasure from Shakespeare, but that didn't stop me from really enjoying this book. Highly recommend if you're looking for a well written character drama/thriller.

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD.

Initially I intended to give this book a solid 1 star for its hellish cliché format and the incessant quoting of Shakespeare by its characters. What changed my mind? Well, the clichés died out a bit and the plot developed more of a sturdy structure.

In many ways this feels analogous to Donna Tartt's "The Secret History" but not in the great way one would expect.

One of the things that really irked me about this book was the relationship established between James and Oliver, it was underdeveloped and weak. The beginning of the story does not really imply any strong connection between them and it gets inserted in around midway into the writing with no strong foundation. This would be excusable if their "connection" per se is explored and developed further on into the story, perhaps tested more than a vague acknowledgment of feelings on both sides right before James dies (classic "kill one of the queers off before they can have a relationship").

Frankly, the deaths in this book did not feel very tragic and none of the characters felt alive in any sense. The irony is these characters all claim they feel that they are no more than just the roles they play or how they look—don't get me started on the whole femme fatale thing going on with Meredith—all in all they came off as plastic and inauthentic.

The building up of the plot was the only thing that pushed my rating from a 2/5 to a 3/5. Even that, the only redeemable quality of this work, was not particularly mind-blowing.

3/5.