I read this in a day. On my commute to and from work… on my breaks, and when I finished. I genuinely couldn’t get enough of this book. 

That being said. Shakespeare. *sigh*. If someone had told me beforehand that a good chunk of this book would be the characters basically saying lines from shakespeares plays, I would have said “yeah, no thanks.” It’s been 14 years since I studied Shakespeare in school, and it just bought on a load of PTSD for me. (School experience wasn’t great). 

That being said. I do love a good thriller/mystery. So, I kept at it. Sometimes I would skim the Shakespeare passages, but at the heart of the story is a group of broken teenagers who have found their own family in each other. Who love each other and hate each other. 

What I didn’t like was how incestuous the group was. One minute this person was sleeping with this person in the group, and then would sleep with another person, and kiss someone else. I was just like??? Dude… no wonder people got jealous and hurt. 

I did sorta guess the plot twist about half way through, but that didn’t ruin the reading experience for me at all. The revelation at the end was sort of bittersweet and we were still left on a cliffhanger in the epilogue. Sequel maybe? Who knows. 

I still can’t believe that this is Rio’s debut novel. It’s absolutely beautifully written, her descriptive imagery is perfect and the amount is exposition is just what was needed. I’ve already pre ordered Graveyard Shift by M.L. Rio, so we’ll see whether I enjoy that one as well

Did If We Were Villains live up to the mountains and mountains of hype that surrounded it? Sorta. But it’s not a book I’m going to be shouting from the rooftops about.