If We Were Villains: The Sensational TikTok Book Club pick: M.L. Rio

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Meredith is definitely the temptress, the femme fatale; she’s the she-devil of the story, tempting everyone with her perfect figure like she’s some sort of sexual goddess walking on Earth amongst mortals; I, for once, didn’t like her almost at all; even though I sometimes felt sorry for her, I only saw her as being fake first of all to herself and then to the other around her; I wanted to like her, but I couldn’t, she was lying to herself and she only played with the others to make herself feel better; The title of M. L. Rio’s debut novel, If We Were Villains (2017), is borrowed from William Shakespeare’s King Lear, the final play the fourth-year acting students perform before Oliver Marks confesses to a crime he did not commit. In King Lear, the full line suggests that excess (“surfeits of our own behavior”) leads to disasters that people will try to blame on others. In Shakespeare, the Sun, Moon, and stars are “made guilty” as a result. The novel approaches the problem of excess and potential (‘if’) villainy differently, denying even the possibility of guilt. When the group agrees to not save their grievously injured classmate, they never ask whether this decision will make them guilty of murder, focusing instead on how it would benefit them if this abusive bully were not to be alive, and in the novel the attempt to escape responsibility wreaks havoc. Over the course of the novel’s five “acts,” the group will grapple with this conditional phrase, wondering what it means to understand themselves as villains in the drama they together enact.

A group of boys at Welton Academy find their lives changing for the better when they get a new English professor named John Keating. Filippa - Mysterious and nice. No one knows much about her, but she gets along well with Oliver. She, like Oliver, usually gets the leftover parts because no one really knows what 'her thing' is. Meredith’s older brother and the only family member she sees when she visits New York for holidays. Approaching his 30s, Caleb likes to party. Many readers including Cynthia d'Aprix Sweeney, the writer of The Nest, compared this novel to Donna Tartt's The Secret History. So, it’s clear Colborne doesn’t believe Oliver to be guilty. Oliver finally agrees that, once he is released, he will tell Colborne the full story.

Alexander Vass, a gay former foster-care student of half-Latino descent and drug addict. Plays The Villain. Spending more and more time with the Bunnies and at their off-campus ‘workshops’ which are truly rituals where they conjure the monsters in their imaginations, the line between fiction and reality begins to blur. The writing in If We Were Villains was also really beautiful. I found myself tabbing A LOT of this book because it was so wonderfully written. The prose was a good balance of pretentious and flowery, a hallmark of the genre, but not overly incomprehensible. I also loved how the atmosphere and setting were established. Rio created such a tacit and tangible setting, with the smells and the pictures and the tone so easy to picture. I liked how she took Shakespearean conventions to establish elements of the story, blending prose and play in such a clever way. The Which of us could say we were more sinned against than sinning? We were so easily manipulated - confusion made a masterpiece of us.”

Half the beauty of the book is the way it's written. The way it was all put together was pure genius. I would have to agree that this was waaayyy more accessible to the wider audience and less of pretentious of a read, which ironically, had more self awareness of its vast pretentiousness.

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When their activities get out of hand, one of their friends, Bunny, ends up dead. Soon, the group begin to turn on one another and their lives start to fall apart. This was literally: The Secret History VS If We Were Villains, and obviously for me, the former wins with a BIG SLAP across the face against IWWV. I think on its bare bones, there wasn't much substance following the fact after we learn who was killed...which was pretty predictable in every sense. And murderer(s)? Equally pinned down. Call me a wizardry thriller enthusiast, I don't know but the fact that this was basically a lighter thriller and even more less mysterious counterpart than that of its successor before it- The Secret History....kind of ruined it for me I suppose.