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

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Gwendolyn Oswald, one of only two main teachers of the fourth-year acting students at Dellecher. A strict woman who favors Richard as her favorite student. A tale worthy of the Bard himself...ending in one final, astonishing twist. Recommended for readers with refined literary tastes, and those looking for 'something like' Donna Tartt." Actors are by nature volatile— alchemic creatures composed of incendiary elements, emotion and ego and envy. Heat them, up stir them together, and sometimes you get gold. Sometimes disaster." his whole world is falling apart & once he realizes he can’t stop it or fix it or change it, there’s only one thing left to do”

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

This is such a good book; I’ve been obsessed with it for at least a week straight and even though I felt the urge to devour it, I didn’t want it to end so fast so I had to slow down and enjoy. You know what happened when I did that? I truly enjoyed it. If We Were Villains lured me in, like a fish to a hook, by appealing to my dark academia loving heart. Shakespearian aesthetics, academic setting, homoeroticism, a secret society whose members communicate (pretentiously) through literary quotes, characters doing morally dubious things at odd hours, a devastating murder, and M.L. Rio has set the scene for an exhilarating, unsettling, and devastating thriller. In short, I was never going to surface from this story with my emotions intact. Which of us could say we were more sinned against than sinning? We were so easily manipulated - confusion made a masterpiece of us.” i want to be the cool girl who walks around with a worn, annotated copy of this book. i’m taking a pen to the text and doing some research next time i read this. ✍🏻 The moral outrage we should have suffered was quietly put down, surpassed like an unpleasant rumor before it had a chance to be heard. Whatever we did—or, more crucially, did not do— it seemed that so no so long as we did it together, our individual sins might be abated. There is no comfort like complicity."Richard Stirling’s cousin and peer actor. Petite and blonde with an innocent disposition, Wren is often cast as an ingenue at Dellecher. Fragile Wren suffers bitterly following her cousin’s death.

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Many readers including Cynthia d'Aprix Sweeney, the writer of The Nest, compared this novel to Donna Tartt's The Secret History. drama students at an Elite Arts University are in their final year. They are as close as 7 people can be, they fight, they love and above it all they are obsessed with the works of Shakespeare (bear this in mind if you don't like Shakespeare as there are loads of quotes and sections in here). Basically, Pericles has both a wife and a daughter he thinks are dead for the majority of the play. He sails into the ocean to die because he thinks everyone he loves is gone, but he then finds out that his wife and daughter, are actually alive, and the final part of the play is Pericles being reunited with them both. Pericles is an interesting play because it is set up like a tragedy but ends up like a comedy - aka, in the Shakespearean comedies, the drama is resolved when the characters who are presumed to be dead turn out to be alive, or when two characters kept apart by circumstances end up getting married.Wren - Richard's cousin, a delicate flower. Another reviewer described her as 'the girl next door' which I think is a good description for her. Alexander - The funny friend. He's gay and latinx. Known for partying/drinking/drugs. He was one of my favouries because he was so funny. Usually gets the funny side character parts. Oliver’s younger sister. Caroline and Oliver do not get along. Caroline is sent to an expensive recovery center for treatment for anorexia. The fourth years are assigned King Lear as their spring production. However, as the semester progresses, the cast grows increasingly despondent due to Richard's death. Wren begins to suffer fainting spells, James breaks Oliver's nose during combat practice, and Alex overdoses on drugs but survives. The night of the Lear cast party, James gets drunk and begins acting erratically, only speaking in character as Edmund. The following morning, as Oliver cleans their dorm room, he discovers a bloodstained boat hook hidden in James' mattress.

If We Were Villains: The Sensational TikTok Book - AbeBooks If We Were Villains: The Sensational TikTok Book - AbeBooks

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. You are terrible wrong if your answer was yes. Because I delight in drama. (Telenovelas might have a say to that but uhm, who can say for sure?) Oliver - The main character. He's the 'good guy', generally nice, just wants everyone to be friends and keep the peace. He is a bit naive, a little bit unsure of himself, but as likeable as these characters can be. Meredith - The vixen. Described constantly as this impossibly attractive woman, no man is immune. Every part she has ever played has invoked this sexual aura she seems to have.it's okay to press pause and try again later if you're not liking this one. as a mood reader, i had to be in the perfect mood for this book or it wouldn’t have hit the same. A good Shakespearian actor - a good actor of any stripe, really - doesn’t just say words, he feels them. We all felt the passions of the characters we played as if they were our own. But a character’s emotions don’t cancel out the actor’s - instead you feel both at once. Imagine having all your own thoughts and feelings tangled up with all the thoughts and feelings of a whole other person. It can be hard, sometimes, to sort out which is which.” From the moment six of them discover the body of the seventh, an unforgiving road leading to self-depreciation opens up before all of them. They slowly start to degrade, both morally and physically. They become unsettled and cold. They have to make decisions that might alter their lives forever. They start making decisions no one has to make in life. here’s some advice if you are intimidated by this book like i was: (i literally put this book off for years.)✨

If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio | Goodreads If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio | Goodreads

Oliver’s amicable youngest sister. Leah and Oliver get along well. Leah stays in touch with Oliver throughout his incarceration. The sky was clear and quiet, stars peering curiously down at us from a wide dome of indigo. The water, too, was still, and I thought, what liars they are, the sky and the water. Still and calm and clear, like everything was fine. It wasn’t fine, and really, it never would be again.”

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All in all, we follow main characters. At first, I do think they're a bit stereotypical and cliche, but I thought Rio did a good job at exploring these cliches, and analysing why and how people categorise characters and people. Alexander Vass, a gay former foster-care student of half-Latino descent and drug addict. Plays The Villain.