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

Product Information

Oliver admits that he was in love with James while they were together, but says that he also loved her. You might think that the coolest things you can be might include traditional things, like "in possession of a motorcycle" or "a New York-based artist with family money" or "on some sort of high school athletic team / squad designated to cheer on said team.

And each act, to me, really highlights a different Shakespearean play, that really sets the tone for what is unfolding in that act. The plot follows a group of seven acting students whose friendship comes undone after they are cast outside of their usual roles. Oliver arranges for financial aid to complete his final year, agreeing to be the custodian for the Dellecher Castle, where the acting students live. Despite Oliver’s confession, Detective Colborne, the lead investigator on the case, has always suspected Oliver was not behind the murder. Tensions run high as the play is slow to come together and, after the Macbeth performance, a friendly game in the lake turns ugly when Richard holds James under water, nearly drowning him.

Rio makes it impossible not to be consumed by this story, not to fall in love with each of these characters, with the encompassing attraction of a group of friends who have made ruins of each other, and the tragic intoxicating chemistry of two lovers who held each other in plain sight of the world, though their bodies remained forever separate. Meredith and Oliver continue dating but struggle to be comfortable together under the watchful eye of Richard’s specter.

Meredith Dardenne, an incredibly beautiful redhead who comes from a wealthy family of watch-makers; Richard's girlfriend. The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. As someone who adores the dark academia genre, I’ve predicted that I will love this book ardently, but I wasn’t expecting to get so invested in these characters, to see such a great analysis on what it means to be an actor – how you can lose yourself while trying to get into your character and what it means to be so passionate about something that you can let it destroy you willingly.If We Were Villains is the story of a tightly knit group of seven lyric-mad Shakespearean thespians who seem to prefer each other’s company to anyone else’s, thereby offending the rest of the world. Deluded, disguised, untimely fear that drove all of his concentration to a non-existent moment in time when something he never held would be lost. While his plays are timeless works of art, some people find them challenging due to the Elizabethan prose. A young, Chilean fight choreographer, personal trainer, and movement coach for acting students at Dellecher. The night before auditions for Julius Caesar, one of the students—Alexander—suggests that the auditions are pointless as all seven have been consistently typecast — the hero (James), the villain (Alexander), the tyrant (Richard), the temptress (Meredith), the ingénue (Wren), and the unlucky two consigned to bit parts (Oliver and Filippa).