BookBrowse Reviews The Villa by Rachel Hawkins

BookBrowse:

The Villa by Rachel Hawkins is a thrilling story of twisted friendships, passion and murder that will keep you guessing until the final page.

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Emily Sheridan's life is falling apart. She's been plagued by an unknown illness, her husband has left and a draft of her latest cozy mystery is long overdue. When her childhood best friend, Jessica “Chess” Chandler, who's now a self-help guru, invites Emily to spend the summer at a beautiful Italian villa, Emily thinks things may be turning around. But the villa also has an infamous past, with secrets still waiting to be discovered, and as Emily learns more about the house's bloody history, her friendship with Chess takes a dangerous turn. Fifty years earlier, Mari Godwick travels with her boyfriend and stepsister to Villa Rosato. It's meant to be a summer of music and relaxation, but as the summer progresses, the relationships in the group become twisted by drugs, jealousy and secrets until everything boils over and someone is murdered. Told from the points of view of both Emily and Mari, The Villa is a story of two women surrounded by suspicion and betrayal and connected across time by the secrets of the villa.

The Villa is a dual timeline novel, with Mari's story set in 1974 and Emily's set in the present day. Interestingly, the back-and-forth narration isn't done by alternating chapters; rather, Mari's story is told through her diary, pages of which Emily has found hidden throughout the villa. Also included are newspaper and magazine articles, podcast transcripts and song lyrics that expand on Mari's life and work as well as those of her stepsister, Lara. This mixed-media format keeps the story moving quickly while also adding background details and dropping hints of the tragedies and betrayals to come. It also gives readers a better sense of the cultural impact of Mari's novel and Lara's album, both released in the wake of that eventful summer.

Hawkins cites Fleetwood Mac, the Manson murders and Mary Shelley's summer at a Lake Geneva castle as inspirations for her novel. The connections to music and murder are clear in the 1974 timeline, but the connections between Mari and Lara and Mary (Godwin) Shelley are less overt. During the summer of 1816, Mary traveled to Geneva with her stepsister, Claire, and her lover, the poet Percy Shelley (see Mary Shelley, Lord Byron and the Writing of Frankenstein). Mari and Lara's lives are strikingly similar to the real lives of Mary and Claire, with similar family dynamics, sibling rivalries and romantic entanglements. Mary produced Frankenstein during her summer abroad, while Mari wrote her own horror novel, Lilith Rising, and Lara produced the album Aestas, for which the Italian villa of the novel was renamed. All three women became famous for their works.

Although both relationships are entirely fictional, Mari and Lara's friendship shares similarities with Emily and Chess's. As stepsisters, Mari and Lara have a fair amount of sisterly rivalry, and Emily and Chess, who were once as close as sisters, share a similar competitive streak. Furthermore, as the summers progress, the pairs' relationships become strained; small acts of betrayal breed distrust, and a general paranoia hovers over their interactions. Some of this increased suspicion is driven by the small cast and the insular setting, and Hawkins knows how to play up this uneasiness to produce several twists. And what dramatic twists they are: truth is rewritten for drama, revenge is taken to the extreme, deals are made with the devil and the novel's ending is a landslide of dark surprises that resolve the story in a satisfying if unsettling manner.

The Villa is a story of toxic relationships, dangerous secrets and men who underestimate the women in their lives. Rachel Hawkins's latest is a must-read for devotees of psychological thrillers with twisty endings, fans of dual timelines with unique setups and readers who enjoy strong female leads who do whatever it takes to succeed.

This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in February 2023, and has been updated for the November 2023 edition. Click here to go to this issue.