Obviously this book is highly reminiscent of Donna Tartt’s 1992 “The Secret History.” One of Rio’s characters even shares a name with one of Tartt’s characters. However, I did enjoy this novel of Rio’s, probably because it was so related to Tartt’s book. There is suspense and intrigue, dark academia, and morally grey characters, all of which add up to a highly atmospheric novel. Yet, I found myself conflicted with the novel as a whole, despite what I liked about it. 

I found this novel to be a little bit too closely modeled after Tartt’s book. I felt that Rio took a lot of ideas/inspiration from Tartt, and didn’t change it up enough for her 2017 story, making “If We Were Villains” basically a cheap knockoff of Tartt’s masterpiece. I also felt that some of the characters were more deeply developed than others, when I would have preferred for them all to have luscious backgrounds and further development as the story continued. In addition, there were parts of the plot/characters that I felt were just randomly thrown in there without any sort of explanation. I kept waiting for the reasoning of these certain details, and never got them, unfortunately.