Books like If We Were Villains
What should you read after M.L. Rio’s novel? It depends on what you loved most about it.
- M.L. Rio
- 2017
- Dark academia
What did you love about it?
Choosing one reorders everything below.
Best books to read after If We Were Villains
Ranked overall. Pick what you loved above to re-rank them.
Best overall matchThe Secret History
Donna Tartt
The book Rio is answering: a small group of classics students, a death they arranged between them, and the years of pretending afterwards. Read both, argue about which is better.
- A closed group of seven
- A death they all carry
- Confession years afterwards
- Greek, not Shakespeare
Best for the closed householdThe Likeness
Tana French
An undercover detective moves into a house of five graduate students who live like a family and lie like one. The group dynamic Rio writes, examined from inside.
- A closed group of seven
- A death they all carry
- Beautiful, doomed young people
- Requires a big premise leap
Great matchThe Raven Boys
Maggie Stiefvater
A private-school group whose loyalty to each other is the whole point, written in sentences that share Rio's fondness for the theatrical.
- A closed group of seven
- Queer longing left unspoken
- Beautiful, doomed young people
- Magic and prophecy involved
Great matchThe Shadow of the Wind
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
For the atmosphere: literature as an obsession worth ruining your life over, in a Barcelona built entirely out of fog and old grudges.
- Beautiful, doomed young people
- A death they all carry
- Confession years afterwards
- No campus, no ensemble
Best for the campus mysterySpecial Topics in Calamity Physics
Marisha Pessl
A precocious narrator, a charismatic teacher, an exclusive clique and a body. It is a dark academia mystery that is also showing off, and the showing off is fun.
- An elite arts conservatory
- A closed group of seven
- A death they all carry
- Arch and self-conscious
Worth a look — with a warningThe Book Thief
Markus Zusak
On the list for its language rather than its subject: a narrator with an unusual vantage point and a real appetite for the theatrical sentence.
- Beautiful, doomed young people
- Confession years afterwards
- Nazi Germany, not a campus
Worth a look — with a warningThe Night Circus
Erin Morgenstern
Recommended for the performance: people who exist inside a production and cannot step out of it, described in prose that wants to be looked at.
- Casting as personality
- Beautiful, doomed young people
- Fantasy, not campus crime
Best for a lighter puzzleThe Westing Game
Ellen Raskin
A locked cast of characters each assigned a role in someone else's script, and a death to solve. Written for children, and cleverer than most adult mysteries.
- Casting as personality
- A closed group of seven
- Middle-grade, no darkness
Worth a look — with a warningThe Name of the Rose
Umberto Eco
A closed scholarly community, deaths patterned on a text, and characters who argue in Latin. Dark academia before anyone called it that.
- An elite arts conservatory
- A death they all carry
- Shakespeare quoted as speech
- Long theological digressions
Best for the late confessionThe Thirteenth Tale
Diane Setterfield
An old writer finally telling the true version of her life to a biographer, which is exactly the frame Oliver's story uses. Gothic, bookish, satisfying.
- Confession years afterwards
- A death they all carry
- No student group
Great matchThe Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
A narrator who was present, complicit and telling it afterwards, about beautiful people who let someone else take the blame. Rio quotes this tradition knowingly.
- Beautiful, doomed young people
- Confession years afterwards
- A death they all carry
- Jazz Age, not campus
Worth a look — with a warningThe Bell Jar
Sylvia Plath
For the register rather than the plot: a brilliant young woman narrating her own collapse with terrible clarity and the occasional joke.
- Beautiful, doomed young people
- An elite arts conservatory
- No mystery, no ensemble
Great matchA Separate Peace
John Knowles
A man returns to his old school to account for what he did to his best friend. Same architecture, same unspoken love, a fraction of the length.
- Confession years afterwards
- Queer longing left unspoken
- A death they all carry
- Two boys, not seven
What should you read after If We Were Villains?
If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio works on several levels at once, and which book you should read next depends on which of those levels got you. For most readers the closest match is The Secret History by Donna Tartt — the book Rio is answering: a small group of classics students, a death they arranged between them, and the years of pretending afterwards. Read both, argue about which is better.
If what stayed with you was a closed group of seven, read The Likeness by Tana French instead: an undercover detective moves into a house of five graduate students who live like a family and lie like one. The group dynamic Rio writes, examined from inside. The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater is the other strong option — a private-school group whose loyalty to each other is the whole point, written in sentences that share Rio's fondness for the theatrical.
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