If We Were Villains

I was never a theater kid, so half this book bored me immensely instead of – as I suppose was the intent – making me gasp at the author's genius for including certain plays and pages of dialogue. And I do mean PAGES and PAGES of dialogue from Shakespeare's plays. Also, the characters don't come across as sparkling and witty; they come across as horribly pretentious and off-putting. The author loved to harp on and on about how “close” their friendships were, but their relationships with each other looked so shallow.

Around the 35% mark, I realized why the story started with establishing the fact that someone was killed and someone who'd been in prison for it may not have been the real villain: because the book is incredibly DULL, and if it wasn't for those two tidbits, then I (and many other people, I'm thinking) would have stopped reading.

I pushed myself on after again feeling the urge to DNF this crap at around 50% but I wanted to see if all the things I thought were correct, and yep, they were. I knew who the victim would be, I knew who the guilty person was, I knew why people did what they did, etc. etc. These conclusions were drawn way, way, way before the 50% mark and I was thinking the entire time, “No, this can't be it. The victim can't truly be the victim ... and the obvious guilty party can't truly be the one who did it, right? There's going to be a twist. Some cool turn coming, surely?” Nope. Didn't happen. I was imagining all sorts of cool stuff that could raise the level of this book. More crimes, more cunning, something more? Nope. Boring and disappointing.