If We Were Villains

At an elite conservatory where a tight-knit group of seven fourth-year acting students live and breathe Shakespeare, the rigid roles they have always played, hero, villain, ingenue, tyrant, begin to bleed off the stage and into their real relationships, until jealousy, obsession, and a night of violence leave one of them dead and another imprisoned, and years later, released from prison, that student finally agrees to tell a detective what really happened. Rio writes an atmospheric, immersive dark-academia thriller steeped in Shakespearean language and theatrical intensity, in which the students so thoroughly inhabit their assigned archetypes that the line between performance and reality dissolves, building suspense not around whodunit, revealed early, but around exactly how art, ego, and passion drove them to catastrophe. The prose is lush and the atmosphere seductive. This suits readers who want an immersive, elegant thriller about theater, obsession, and friendship curdling into tragedy, especially fans of dark academia and Shakespeare. It fits less well anyone wanting a fast, plot-first mystery or unfamiliar with the theatrical texture, since the book luxuriates in atmosphere and language. The detail that the students' offstage lives come to mirror the tragic roles they play, with deadly results, gives the book its seductive premise. Atmospheric, intense, and immersive, it rewards readers who love dark academia. Content note: it involves violence and death, so sensitive readers should be aware, but its theatrical dread is exactly what makes it so absorbing.

Best for readers who want to be kept on edge: propulsive, twisty, and hard to put down. The writing rewards attention without being demanding, a good balance of depth and readability. It moves quickly: once you're in, it's hard to stop. Readers who prefer character depth over plot drive may find it thin.