Lilibet Bombshell's Reviews > The Villa

Real Rating: 3.5 / 5 Stars

Sometimes I’m reading a book and I can’t help but think where the idea came from–where the genesis of the book started for the author. In this case, a rather famous handful of days when an intimate and libertine group of writers and philosophers spent during a handful of interminably rainy days near Geneva, Switzerland in 1816 in a home known as Villa Diodati is what immediately what jumped into my head, and the various tales and known facts of what happened at Villa Diodati among Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Godwin (the future Mary Shelley), John William Polidori (Shelley’s personal physician), and Mary’s stepsister, Claire Clairmont. Mary wrote the first draft of the novel that would become Frankenstein, Polidori wrote The Vampyre, Byron finished up works he had been stuck on, and Claire Clairmont entered into a very short affair with Byron that produced a child she had no means to care for (the child was raised by Byron and his family). Byron proclaimed to hate her and that she was to stay away, but she held onto her obsession with him for years and never married. Percy Bysshe Shelley died a mere six years after the events at Villa Diodati in a sailing accident after a good many years of being in poor health and suffering from severe depression.

So you can see where, when I start to read a book where one timeline is about two best friends who are staying in a villa one summer where, in the past, a group of artists (a writer and three musicians), who are all rather bohemian and fluid in their relationships, all went through a few weeks where a similar (but not same) set of events happened…I wonder if this is a case of coincidence or if the author knew of this tale, cocked her head and said, “If you rework this some, it would make a great idea for a book”.

The thing is: it really does make for a great book idea in the way Rachel Hawkins plotted out the story. This story of covetousness, selfishness, predation, not asking but just taking, male entitlement, female silence, being forced into corners, mental illness, creation, destruction, and Faustian deals.

The problem is: predictability. I knew where this book was going and how it was likely going to end before I hit the 20% mark. I knew what was going on between the best friends in the present timeline, and I knew what was going on and how it was pretty much going to end in the past timeline. So while the writing was entertaining and engaging enough to keep me reading, the enjoyment of reading the book was affected by the book being so predictable. And that begs a follow-up criticism: I can’t be the only one who found it that predictable, which means it’s not just me that’s going to be disappointed by that fact.

Do I still recommend it? Sure. It’s a fun read. I won’t tell you to run out and buy it right now or that you absolutely must read it, but if you happen to like these type of books, why not give it a whirl?

Thanks go out to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for granting me early access to this title in exchange for a fair and honest review.

File Under: Crime Fiction/General Fiction/Psychological Fiction/Suspense Mystery/Women’s Fiction