There isn’t a single word that doesn’t have a purpose.

This book has been written so beautifully, so thoughtfully. Our sheer capacity for feeling got to be so unwieldy that we staggered under it, like Atlas with the weight of the world. After being completely immersed into the world of Shakespeare for three years, it’s no wonder that their roles in the plays have seeped into the real world, creating an intertwined story of fact and fiction. Their complete infatuation of William Shakespeare, of poetry, of words, creates a whole new world that only they are living and we just get to witness it. The seven main characters were just as unique as they were similar, speaking in a language so like our own, but so very different instead. This book made me homesick for a place I had never been, for friends I have never had. If We Were Villains is such an intricate, multi faceted read that there is no doubt I will get more from it when I inevitably re-read it in the future. Still and calm and clear, like everything was fine. The Water, too, was still, and I thought, what liars they are, the sky and the water. Oliver and his classmates James, Richard, Alexander, Wren, Filippa and Meredith immerse themselves into the world of Shakespearean tragedy, and as they do their lives turn into a tragedy in ways they could never have foreseen. Their fourth year would be their most crucial, and none of them would be left untouched by the goings on of their final year. Little did they know that the rivalries, the violence and the tragedy of the plays they were studying would seep into their lives at school. Oliver Marks and his six fellow theatre students are going in to their fourth and final year at Dellecher, and that means they finally get to perform some Shakespearean tragedies. Rio is an extraordinary novel set at a prestigious arts academy called Dellecher.

If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio