These are kids who have completely immersed themselves in Shakespeare and feed off their collective obsession. It’s easy to get the gist, but there are whole sections where Oliver narrates each section of the play he happened to be performing (it gets a bit tedious – I get it, you’re a Shakespearean) but, for the most part, the in-context use of narrative really works. But this book is also highly pretentious – Oliver as a narrator has a deep and abiding adoration of the conservatoire he is in, he and his friends converse in lines from Shakespeare, and recite poetry to each other while playfighting. As an ex-theatre kid, and lifelong Shakespeare lover, I picked this up for the theatrical elements, and it was exhilarating for the descriptions of the buzz of performing. This is a book that will definitely appeal to theatre kids, though it is super accessible to non-theatre, non-Shakespeare loving students. Sometimes disaster.” ~If We Were Villains~ Heat them up, stir them together, and sometimes you get gold. “Actors are by nature volatile-alchemic creatures composed of incendiary elements, emotion and ego and envy. And when one of the seven friends winds up dead after a cast party, the group of friends have to convince the police (and themselves) that it was just an accident. Until the teachers change the casting, and the dynamics of the group change.
And so starts a tale of dizzying proportions: of a group of theatre students playing the same role onstage and off, so wrapped up in the performance and their friendship. On the day of his release, the detective on the case greets him – he is retiring from the force and wants to know the truth of what happened, off the record, ten years before.
Oliver Marks has just served ten years for a crime he may or may not have committed while a student at a prestigious Shakespeare training college. Secrets carry weight, like lead ~If We Were Villains~ It’s Shakespearian, it’s Dramatic (AF) and it’s murder (plain and simple). I do have quite a few critiques, but they somehow work within the confines of this novel. Somehow, despite the hype (or perhaps because of it) I can join in singing the praises of this novel. I’ve been seeing If We Were Villains on best books of 2018 lists, and bookstagram, and then Queen V.E.Schwab posted that she’d loved it and the balance of people saying this book was incredible set it up to be highly over-rated.
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