In If We Were Villains, a group of seven Shakespearean actors enjoy each other's company, but their friendship becomes strained due to evil, leading to them becoming targets for each other.
Then, the inevitable happened: a murder. Ten years later, detective Colborne still feels the weight of every decision he made and every action he did that fateful night. Numerous narratives exist, each offering a unique interpretation of the events that transpired. Which one was true is only known by one individual. Oliver Marks, free from prison, is ready to put the past behind him, but his mind returns to haunting memories, recalling them with vengeance, and the truth returns with a final rearranging and replaying.
If We Were Villains appealed to my dark academic loving heart, and it drew me in like a fish to a hook. A shocking murder, homoeroticism, an academic setting, Shakespearian aesthetics, a secret society whose members communicate (pretentiously) through literary quotations, characters acting immorally at strange hours, and an exciting, unsettling, and devastating thriller are just a few of the elements that M.L. Rio has skillfully set up. I was never going to come out of this scenario, to put it simply, emotionally intact.
If We Were Villains has a strong attraction. With the all-encompassing attraction of a group of friends who have destroyed each other and the tragically intoxicating chemistry of two lovers who held each other in public view, even though their bodies remained forever apart, Rio makes it impossible not to be engrossed in this story and not fall in love with each of these characters. It's hard not to get entangled in the webs she spins: the tangled webs of longing, frustration, and guilt; the rivalry; the hazy boundaries between hate and love; the broken loyalties; and the violent obsessions that, while they can never end well for most, make for an incredible tale for those who live to tell.
[Zum Medientipp]