If We Were Villains

Comparing this to ‘the secret history’ makes a lot of sense because the themes are similar and the plot shares some key moments, and despite loving both I experienced very different emotions reading them.

This was without the distant unease I felt whilst reading TSH, the characters in IWWV feel so immensely human and were all tragically relatable at different times through the book. The relationships felt so high stakes in the way that young adult relationships tend to and despite disagreeing with almost everything Oliver does throughout, I found myself genuinely rooting for him. It didn’t use isolation of the main character to garner any sympathy for Oliver , in fact you just feel empathy for all of the group the entire way through.

The way that Shakespeare acts as the unreliable narrator for the entire novel but also individually for every character individually is actually genius and has made my fall down a king Lear hole.

At the end of the day it’s a book about twenty somethings being; homoerotic, intensely envious and irrational. Which is what being twenty something is like.