The Villa

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I thought this book was very nicely done and enjoyable. I look forward to reading more of Rachel Hawkins books in the future! Even though there are only 4 or 5 characters that are really important in the 70's timeline, I kept getting confused by their connections to one another, and I honestly don't feel like any of the 'scandal' Hawkins kept trying to add to these sections made the plot more interesting. On top of this, there are several fake 'book excerpts', articles, a transcript of a rather obnoxious podcast, etc. that are interspersed throughout just to focus EVEN MORE on the events of the 70s. I also found it hard to believe that Lara's album Aestas would have been a hit with the excerpts of the 'lyrics' provided: Fleetwood Mac? It was not. I also sort of wish there were more detailed excerpts from Lilith Rising included. I'm so intrigued by Mari's book. I wish it actually existed in real life so I could read it.

Chess shrugs, the silver bangles on her wrist rattling. “People have no taste, then. A Deadly Dig was my favorite so far. That bit at the end on the beach where you’re, like, ‘Oh shit, the wife and the best friend did it together!’” She leans forward, beaming as she grabs my hand across the table. “So damn smart!” This was a highly anticipated book for 2023. I have not read Hawkins before. I may read another one of hers. Her book The Wife Upstairs was nominated for best mystery/thriller in 2021. But if all of her books have 100 f-words, I won’t be reading any more.Things didn’t go well for Emily as expected. She is dealing with overwhelming divorce case: her husband demands royalties from her novels because he thinks she couldn’t write them without his support! She struggled with an unknown disease for a long time that made her dizzy and dysfunctional! Somewhere around the time she started calling herself “Chess,” I realized I might actually hate my best friend. I wasn’t really a fan of the Chess-and-Emily storyline. I bought their weirdly competitive friendship, that wasn’t the issue. But somehow that whole timeline was less suspenseful wondering if someone might have a dark, personal agenda, and more rolling my eyes waiting for a character to notice all the evil things happening around them, all the time. Ugh.

So when Chess invites Emily to join her for an all expenses paid Summer in Umbria, Italy, at the Villa Aestas, offering not only a chance to rejuvenate by the pool with Ice Cold Limoncello and Chilled Orvieto white wine- but also a place, to again become inspired to write-she sets aside her concerns that it is a MURDER HOUSE, and books the first flight out. Friendship and professional jealousy fuel this nail-biter...Intense characters complement the brisk plot, which shifts smoothly between the present and 1974. Hawkins consistently entertains." — Publishers Weekly Despite its flaws though, The Villa is an undeniably bingy read. As mentioned earlier I read this across 2 sittings (one up to 30% on my kindle, the other all the way through) and I felt compelled to see this through to the end, which is definitely something. Unfortunately, The Villa is not a compelling mystery nor does it have particularly likable characters. This one’s an unfortunate misfire. And yet that first bit still stands on its own, another kind of story, another universe of might-have-beens. So, T he Villa. In the 70s, Mari Godwin and her partner, Percy Shelley, I mean, Pierce Sheldon, come to stay at the gorgeous Italian villa with a crew of sex-and-drugs creatives, where she writes the iconic horror Frankenstein, I mean, Lilith Rising. At the same time, her stepsister (Lara Larchmont instead of Claire Claremont) writes a beautiful album, both of which become wildly successful, but the tragedy that happens in the villa shadows everything they created that summer. This awful tragedy hangs over the villa for years to come, too, but personally I didn’t really care about the death, because the men in this storyline are all such unrelenting jerks.Young, star-crossed musical artists looking for inspiration and a getaway, rented an Italian villa. She’s sitting on the floor in the photo, wearing a white shirt and jeans, her feet bare, her toenails painted a bright melon, pose casual and smile bright under the title You Got This!

It's during her stay at the villa that Mari pens one of the greatest horror novels of all time, her magnum opus, Lilith Rising, with the opening words, 'houses remember'. Now two best friends since their childhood came here to spend six weeks at the villa to get inspired for their next novels and taking break from everything they’re dealing with!This suspenseful drama has dual timelines and dual perspectives. I would not classify this as a thriller. There are several good twists and the pacing is consistent, if a tad on the slower side, which might not be for every reader but worked for this reader here. Then she receives a call from her best friend since childhood, Chess. Chess is a motivation guru who's self help books have sold millions worldwide and she makes an offer that Emily can't refuse. Spend the summer with her in Villa Aestas in Orieto, Italy. Here they can hunker down together drinking fine wine, eating delectable dishes, soaking up the Italian sunshine and hopefully writing up a storm. That's the plan anyways. It feels right, then, to break this story up into fragments. Read the first, and it’s sad, but there are moments of light, of joy, even if the reader senses the clouds rolling in. Though Mari and Lara were initially expected to be nothing more than Noel’s and Pierce’s muses and companions, they were the ones to create groundbreaking art that summer. In defying expectations, what did they prove, who did they prove it to, and should they have had to prove anything at all? Do women today still have to “prove” themselves in certain spaces? Thank you to St. Martin’s Press for providing an arc via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

It’s called the Pomodoro technique, and I actually still use it, even though it’s not exactly doing me much good these days. I wave her off. Third, the ‘past’ timeline is light on music and heavy on the sex and drugs. There is also a lot of language. She also feels like the truth may lie within Mari's writings. It becomes a bit of a project for Emily. She's fascinated by the topic and begins writing about it.Present: Emily and Chess navigate their complicated friendship as they each invest time in writing their own books, intrigued by the horrors of the past. As soon as they arrive, she gets affected by the eerie energy of murder house which pushes her learn more about house’s history but her investigation will reveal more ugly secrets about her own life! In the 1974 timeline, we get three stories. First, there’s the publicly known version of the murder. Then we get Mari’s guilt-ridden, fictional version of the murder, where she’s the killer and Lara helped her frame Johnnie. And then, at the very end, we get the final version, where Mari admits that she didn’t kill Pierce, that Johnnie did for reasons unknown, and that she made up the version in which she did the deed herself because she thought it made more sense, was more poetic. The 1974-timeline was giving me heavy Daisy Jones & the Six energy and I wasn't mad about it. It was interesting, with great characters and well-structured reveals. Rachel Hawkins (born November 23, 1979) is the author of Hex Hall, a best-selling trilogy of young adult paranormal romance novels. She is from Dothan, Alabama. [1] [2] She also writes as Erin Sterling. [3] Biography [ edit ]