Instead of chapters, the book mirrors the classic dramatic structure Shakespeare used in his plays, divided into five Acts, and each Act into Scenes. Something which immediately strikes you as you read this book is the structure.

And like The Secret History, we know the outcome of If We Were Villains from the outset: the book opens with Oliver about to be freed from prison after ten years and finally telling the story of what happened to the former police detective in charge of the investigation which ended in his conviction.īut unlike The Secret History, where the group kill Bunny to protect themselves from the consequences of their own actions, and are generally unsympathetic characters, all the characters in If We Were Villains are sympathetic, and their fear of Richard’s increasingly violent behaviour is an understandable motive for each of them. Similarly, Oliver, the narrator of If We Were Villains, believes he is the least talented of the group, permanently cast as the sidekick. Richard from The Secret History does not have the same wealthy background as the others and feels a fraud, at times. The narrator of each book feels like an outsider to the group. This is similar to the small group of Classics students from The Secret History. The seven have survived three annual purges and have a close but sometimes tempestuous relationship with each other. There have been more of them in previous years, but Dellecher has a ruthless policy of culling drama students who do not perform well in their productions, often as many as half in the year. They are drama students who exclusively study Shakespeare. In this book, that translates to a group of seven students entering their fourth year at Dellecher Classical Conservatory. Both feature a very small, tightknit group of friends who are cloistered in an elite, but also intense, learning environment. And there are many similarities between the books. If We Were Villains is frequently compared to Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, with both being considered classics of Dark Academia.

The question is so unlikely, so nonsensical coming from such a sensible man, that I can’t suppress a smile. “Do you blame Shakespeare for any of it?”

If we were villains about