rubyya | If We Were Villains

I recently finished the book If We Were Villains by M. L. Rio and oh my gosh was it amazing. Despite not normally enjoying realistic fiction, and especially not irresponsible college students, I really enjoyed the book. It's about these seven theatre students at a prestigious college. After someone is murdered the book follows how the students deal with the murder, how everything fits together and breaks at the same time. Sure there's a murder, but they're students, they aren't the ones solving the murder, they're simply the ones getting caught up in it. It takes place in 1997 if I recall correctly but it doesn't feel like it. You're so caught up in the story and the lives of the students that the world fades away. It has a sort of philosophical feel, like this is ones of those stories actually meant to tell a lesson and meant to be analyzed, as opposed to all those other stories we have to do in school. I don't know how I found the book, but I'm glad I did. It was beautiful and made me tear up so much at the end.