If We Were Villains

It wouldn't normally do to compare two novels simply because they shared a similar premise, to then disparage the one you liked least – unless of course it's this book, because If We Were Villains is an obvious attempt to recast The Secret History (one of my favourite novels), under the Globe's limelight. So compare, I shall.

Stylistically speaking, this is a YA novel. Both in tone and characterisation. And that's it, that's why I gave it 2/5. Not because YA is bad per se, but because this novel could have been so much more if the tone and characterisation had just been more mature.

The bulk of the group's dialogue with each other is straightforward, petulant, foul-mouthed, typically lacking any sensitivity, or worse, artistry. Unsurprisingly, this is how teenagers are meant to talk; uncouth and unattractive. The use of quotations improved the tone but it rarely felt like a decision made by the characters themselves – never felt Alex or James, but rather M L Rio who wanted to insert the quote.

Which is partly because they never really make it off the page as anything more than thinly personified tropes – tropes that Rio neatly defines for us at the start of the novel, but tropes none-the-less. This lack of characterisation might have been a deliberate choice; as in Shakespeare, the archetypes play archetypal roles. But here, as agents in a novel, that shallowness makes it difficult for my interest to find any grip in the plot beyond the murder mystery itself.

And it is precisely because of tone and characterisation that this novel isn't able to claim a pedestal place by the Secret History. Despite so much of the same set pieces, it is Tart's impressive characterisation and her richly educated tone that make the Secret History so enjoyable. And whilst If We Were Villains wasn't ~not~ enjoyable, it was certainly not impressive in the ways it seemed to wish it could be.