If We Were Villains: The Sensational TikTok Book Club pick: M.L. Rio

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The Castle library was an airy octagonal room, walled with bookshelves, crowded with sumptuous old furniture, and kept drowsily warm by a monumental fireplace that burned almost constantly, regardless of the temperature outside. As a result, no one person is responsible for Richard’s death, although, all six of them are complicit in it. Their final year will focus on Shakespeare’s tragedies, and their fall performance is slated to be Julius Caesar.

At the end of Act 4, for example, Oliver observes that next must come a reckoning and then a fall, both elements of the dramas they study. A true treat and delight for those of us who love Shakespeare and art and love to Feel Emotions but like, can't handle it.

Rio draws on her training as an actor to create the world of an elite drama school ripped apart by a disaster of Shakespearean proportions. i became so enthralled with their lives, how they orbited one another, and just their day-to-day routines. Throughout the novel, the students experience their lives defined by Shakespeare’s plays, using his language to communicate and share their feelings. I began to lust, allowing the creeping optimism that I had kept in my back pocket to navigate towards my heart, my centre.

While his plays are timeless works of art, some people find them challenging due to the Elizabethan prose. After four years of immersing themselves in Shakespeare’s various plays, they embody the very stereotypes in which they are cast on stage. At first, you're trying to sell him to me as this naive underdog, and all of a sudden he's fucking the hottest chick in school? The story follows the students as they manage their relationships, objectives and the consequences of their actions against the backdrop of Shakespearean plays. Chekhov's Gag: When Richard is complaining about how much work he had to do last year while cast in two plays, Filippa tells him not to worry because he's cast as Caesar this year and he dies in Act 3, so he's not got as many lines to learn.Oliver Marks –The protagonist and one of seven Dellecher Classical Conservatory theatrical students. Wren begins to suffer fainting spells, James breaks Oliver's nose during combat practice, and Alex overdoses on drugs but survives. And so, as the cloudless blue sky turned into a hazy pink, and the temperature lowered itself to an autumn-like chill, Remus only thought about James's boyish grin the other night. Afterwards, Oliver discovers a bloodstained piece of fabric in the fireplace and hides it among some discarded sets in the Fine Arts Building.