But Why Didn’t I Like “The Villa?”

The upcoming novel, The Villa, by Rachel Hawkins, is a dual-timeline story, with both stories involving frenemies creating art in the same gorgeous villa, but decades apart.  There are thriller elements, as the villa is the scene of horrible tragedy, as well as questions about which kind of creative work women are allowed and encouraged to do. Despite so many elements I like, I was ultimately underwhelmed with The Villa, and then I was  disappointed by being disappointed since I really enjoyed the author’s last two books.

So, The Villa. In the 70s, Mari Godwin and her partner, Percy Shelley, I mean, Pierce Sheldon, come to stay at the gorgeous Italian villa with a crew of sex-and-drugs creatives, where she writes the iconic horror Frankenstein, I mean, Lilith Rising. At the same time, her stepsister (Lara Larchmont instead of Claire Claremont) writes a beautiful album, both of which become wildly successful, but the tragedy that happens in the villa shadows everything they created that summer.  This awful tragedy hangs over the villa for years to come, too, but personally I didn’t really care about the death, because the men in this storyline are all such unrelenting jerks.

Years later, cozy mystery writer Emily and self-help author Chess rent that villa for a writing retreat and a friendship catchup. The Villa raised interesting ideas about women’s creative work and marketing that work (sexy lady writes an album, pretty lady writes self-help, etc.), it was thoughtful and I think I wanted to explore that further. There was also some suspense, as Emily investigates Mari’s timeline and what really happened in the Villa then.  There’s also another tragedy in this Villa in Emily and Chess’ time, but, again, I didn’t really care about this death, because, again, unrelenting jerk.

I wasn’t really a fan of the Chess-and-Emily storyline. I bought their weirdly competitive friendship, that wasn’t the issue. But somehow that whole timeline was less suspenseful wondering if someone might have a dark, personal agenda, and more rolling my eyes waiting for a character to notice all the evil things happening around them, all the time. Ugh. 

For me, the Mary Shelley theme was a really tantalizing hook, I was intrigued by drugged-up 70s Byron and the weird stepsister relationship, but it never really went anywhere. Since it was never addressed and never unfolded into anything more than replicated names and plotpoints, it felt like instead of a unique backstory or a retro plot, our character was just Mary Shelley in 1974, for reasons I never really understood. And that was disappointing to me, too. 

Instead of reading this one, I suggest The Wife Upstairs, a Southern Gothic retelling of Jane Eyre, or Reckless Girls, a page-turning suspense twist on an adventure travel story, both by the same author. If you like the idea of reinventing the Shelleys and their cursed villa, watch the Thirteenth Doctor in The Haunting of Villa Diodati. (Bonus: Most characters are likable in the episode, unlike in this novel.)

I received an advance copy of this book to review. All opinions on my book blog are my own, as always.