But that is how a tragedy like ours or King Lear breaks your heart—by making you believe that the ending might still be happy, until the very last minute.” A unique world full of morally ambiguous characters, libraries of your dreams and palpable sexual and romantic tension, The Atlas Sixis the perfect book like If We Were Villains for those looking for a replacement. As for the pros, I found If We Were Villains to be well-plotted and well-executed with poignant references to Shakespeare, as well as a compulsively readable mystery with so much suspense and intrigue that you can’t put it down.

An eccentric, aging hippie and the other teacher and director. Her focus is on the craft of acting, which she believes relies on vulnerability and a certain degree of fear.From the moment six of them discover the body of the seventh, an unforgiving road leading to self-depreciation opens up before all of them. They slowly start to degrade, both morally and physically. They become unsettled and cold. They have to make decisions that might alter their lives forever. They start making decisions no one has to make in life.

The book is an emotional and poignant retelling of the story of the Greek hero, Achilles, from the point of view of his best friend, Patroclus.Okay, so this is a drama set at a Shakespeare theater, in which a group of theater actors accidentally kill a man and deal with the fallout. Yay! Fun happy stuff. As the plays continue, their roles within this drama shift and switch, ironically mirroring their respective development, and they accidentally get way too involved in several plays as they are occuring. A good Shakespearian actor - a good actor of any stripe, really - doesn’t just say words, he feels them. We all felt the passions of the characters we played as if they were our own. But a character’s emotions don’t cancel out the actor’s - instead you feel both at once. Imagine having all your own thoughts and feelings tangled up with all the thoughts and feelings of a whole other person. It can be hard, sometimes, to sort out which is which.” It also draws upon themes from dark academia and coming-of-age novels really well for those who like the “loss of innocence” narrative in a darker context. Lastly, the ending comes with a few surprising plot twists, and the characters feel like they will remain memorable to me over time.

Meredith’s older brother and the only family member she sees when she visits New York for holidays. Approaching his 30s, Caleb likes to party. Oliver’s amicable youngest sister. Leah and Oliver get along well. Leah stays in touch with Oliver throughout his incarceration. The school’s occult history is everywhere as girls gather in dark rooms but Felicity wants to leave that all behind after last year. Asked to help first-year and prodigy novelist Ellis Haley research the Dalloway Five for the girl’s second book, Felicity can’t say no. Oliver - Our main protagonist, who is nice, and who is sweet, and who just wants to keep the peace between his group of friends. Also, Oliver is totally pansexual and no one can change my mind on this.If anyone quoted more than five lines of Shakespeare to my face in every single conversation they've had with me.....you can bet it can definitely end in tragedy!!!! For readers who love the Ancient Greek and academic aspect of dark academia, The Song of Achilles is the perfect read. This was literally: The Secret History VS If We Were Villains, and obviously for me, the former wins with a BIG SLAP across the face against IWWV. I think on its bare bones, there wasn't much substance following the fact after we learn who was killed...which was pretty predictable in every sense. And murderer(s)? Equally pinned down. Call me a wizardry thriller enthusiast, I don't know but the fact that this was basically a lighter thriller and even more less mysterious counterpart than that of its successor before it- The Secret History....kind of ruined it for me I suppose.

Richard is the tyrant and the only character that I truly despised from the beginning; no matter how talented you are, what a promising rising star you might be, if you’re not a decent human being, then you’re nothing; and Richard is absolutely disgusting as a day-to-day person and I couldn’t like him in any way. Oliver’s best friend and roommate. James is the most handsome and studious of the fourth-year acting students. He is often cast as the hero but wants more diverse acting roles. Hounded by Richard, James becomes increasingly distraught as the novel progresses. James is sometimes portrayed as jealous of Meredith and Oliver’s relationship. The question is so unlikely, so nonsensical coming from such a sensible man, that I can’t suppress a smile. “I blame him for all of it,” I say.James - Oliver's roommate and best friend. He's popular, a great actor, and usually gets the great, tragic hero roles. This book is terribly deep if you really pay attention to everything that’s happening. It warns you about abuse, about obsession, about death and about the decisions we can make avoid certain situations; it is about what love looks like – it might be a friend, it might be a sister, it might be loyalty, in the end. Surprising. After all, Shakespeare is poetry—most of it, anyway— and there’s a certain mathematical pattern to poetry, isn’t there?"