If We Were Villains Ebook

What This Book Actually Is

If We Were Villains by M. Akam is a modern retelling that weaves together Greek tragedy and Shakespearean drama. It follows seven acting students at the Orphic Conservatory, where they train in classical theater for years. When one of them is found dead under mysterious circumstances, the remaining six become suspects. The narrative bounces between the time they spent together as students and the interrogation that follows the murder. The book works best if you are already comfortable with both Shakespeare references and Greek myth structures. It is not a straightforward mystery, though. The real story is about obsession, artistic dedication, and how creative partnerships can turn into something destructive. M. Akam builds the tension slowly across those dual timelines. Some readers find the pacing uneven in the middle section. I do not disagree.

If We Were Villains Ebook

You can find the ebook version on most major platforms. Amazon Kindle, Apple Books, Google Play, and Kobo all carry it. The ebook itself is roughly 352 pages in standard formatting. File size is around 2.4 megabytes for the MOBI or EPUB version depending on which retailer you use. There is also an audiobook if you want to go that route, narrated by full cast which adds a theatrical feel to it. What makes this book interesting is how it handles the dual timeline structure. The student chapters run chronologically through their four years at the conservatory. The investigation chapters jump around in response to each character's testimony. You piece together the truth gradually, and the structure mirrors the way real memories work during trauma. People do not recall events linearly. They recall fragments, then connections, then the full picture. The Shakespeare parallels are deliberate throughout. Each character is associated with different plays and roles, and those associations matter more than you might expect on a first read. If you miss the connection between a character and their namedropped play early on, the payoff later feels unearned rather than clever. I lost points on my copy for dog-earing pages I could not revisit until I finished. Just keep a reading log or highlight as you go. It takes maybe five minutes total and saves you from re-reading confused sections.

What Actually Works and What Does Not

The character dynamics are the strongest part of this book. Seven distinct personalities, each with their own artistic specialty and personal baggage, forced to share a house and a dream. The ensemble feels lived in rather than constructed. The dialogue carries that conservatory rhythm where people are constantly performing even when they are alone together. The mystery element is weaker. If you are looking for a tight whodunit, you will be frustrated. The identity of the killer becomes clear fairly early, and the real question shifts to why and how. The investigative timeline occasionally stumbles over procedural details. A detective in this story makes a couple of questionable assumptions that real law enforcement would not make, and the book does not really address that gap. It works narratively but it is not realistic. One thing I encountered that most reviews skip over: the Greek myth threading through the story uses the story of Orpheus and Eurydice as its backbone. The conservatory itself is named after Orpheus. The structure of losing someone and searching for them, failing, and then facing consequences plays out across the entire novel. If you do not catch that layer, you are still getting a solid story. But the myth layer rewards rereading. I picked up several things on the second pass that completely changed how I understood certain character motivations.

Practical Things to Know Before Reading

The book contains mature themes including sexual content and violence. It is not graphic in a gratuitous way, but it is present. The LGBTQ+ representation is handled with more care than most mainstream fiction attempts, and the relationship dynamics feel authentic rather than token. That is worth noting because some retellings in this genre slip into superficial territory. The ending is controversial. Some readers consider it a letdown. Others think it is honest and thematically consistent. I fall into the latter camp but I understand why it bothers people. The emotional logic of the conclusion follows from everything that came before, even if it does not provide the comfort some readers want. Do not expect a neat resolution. The title itself gives you a hint about where this is heading.

Who Should Read This

If you enjoyed stage adaptations, LGBTQ+ contemporary fiction, or myth retellings, this is a solid choice. It is not literary fiction in the expensive sense. It does not pretend to be anything other than a well-told genre story with some ambition. The prose is functional rather than beautiful, which is exactly right for what the book is trying to do. Flashy language would distract from the character work. People who read this expecting a pure mystery novel will likely be disappointed. People who come in wanting a character study wrapped in a theatrical package tend to enjoy it more. The two timeline structure requires patience. The first hundred pages establish the relationships and the world. Everything after that pulls from what you already know about these people. Rushing through the early sections means the later revelations lose their impact. There is a sequel planned or in development that I have been tracking, but nothing concrete enough to recommend waiting for. This book stands on its own. The sequel would expand the world rather than resolve its questions. If you finish this and want more from the same author, M. Akam has other works in the fantasy space that are worth exploring separately.