Review for "The Villa" by Rachel Hawkins

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

The Villa is a mystery thriller book set in an idyllic Italian landscape and told in two perspectives. Firstly, we have Emily: an author of cozy mysteries that she's less than passionate about but writing because they pay the bills. With a costly impending divorce, she desperately needs to write the next book in her Petal Bloom series. Emily's best friend from childhood is Chess: an ultra successful author of self-help books aimed at helping women take back control over their lives. Emily and Chess decide to spend the summer at an Italian villa, where Mari, an inspiring author and resident ingenue caught up in the rock star scene, stayed when she was 19 in the 70's. Emily starts to realize that Mari's story may not be all it seems, and her investigation is accompanied by bitter exes, conniving friends, and shocking discoveries.

CHARACTERS

Emily was an unimpressionable main character. I did empathize with her a lot, especially at anything related to Matt. It's unfortunate that we didn't get to see Matt as an actual character; he's just sort of the one-dimensional Big Bad Wolf of the story. Morally gray is a characteristic claimed by Chess, the problematic best friend. She is more layered than the two other aforementioned characters, but she's completely unbearable to read about, so I'm not sure I appreciated her layers. In relation to Chess, I found it difficult to empathize with Emily when she was being such a doormat. Chess betrayed her so many times and then manipulated her way out it, and Emily just lets her. It's either an indication of Emily's intelligence or self-respect and either way I was cringing at it.

PLOT

I knew that the plot twist hints were too obvious to be the full story. For example, Chess wearing the anklet and Emily having found a bracelet in Matt's things (indicating his infidelity) was too obvious a sign that it was Chess that Matt cheated with. I was somewhat mollified at the fact that there was more to the story--i.e. Chess actually being on Emily's side and not Matt's. (Although, it's completely plausible she actually was on Matt's side, and literally poisoning Emily, and just weaseled her way out of it as the tides shifted. This possibility is supported by Chess's veiled threat at her dinner with Emily in the end, but it still wasn't obvious enough for me to really believe it was intentional by the author). The Chess flip is also completely tainted by two facts. Firstly, let's examine how Emily let herself be manipulated by all Chess's reasonings and pleading. She just lets her off the hook for sleeping with her husband and continuing to talk to him based on Chess's flimsy explanations. AND THEN she lets Chess in on the book! Girl, how do you not realize that Chess will just say whatever she needs to to get what she wants? And then you let her have half the book, which you spend the entire novel desperately trying to avoid. The logic just does not compute to me. "Oh, you had an affair with my husband? I get your reasoning completely, here have half of my million-dollar book idea." Secondly, WHAT was that Matt ending? He drowns in a pool? As told by journalists???? There is no payoff. We spend so much of the book building up a hatred for Matt, expecting some big no body, no crime (a la T Swift) moment, and we get literally nothing. I'm sure there was some reason the author decided to do this, but I can't for the life of me figure it out.

ATMOSPHERE/WRITING

I'm so conflicted on this. I can't tell if Chess was written brilliantly or just chaotically. Either way, I hated her from start to finish. I also feel that the atmosphere of the book was lacking. It's set in a totally serene Italian estate and it feels like the plot could have been picked up and set in any random house without much change to the story.

I was feeling 3 stars for this the entire time until Matt's drowning. It wasn't very "thrilling" for a thriller, but I did want to read to the end... and then I got to the end, the most anticlimactic thriller confrontation ever, seeing as it was nonexistent. Very disappointing.