Thank you Libro.fm / Macmillan Audio, #partner for the ALC of The Villa in exchange for my honest review.
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Published: January 3, 2023
Summary:
From New York Times bestselling author Rachel Hawkins comes a deliciously wicked gothic suspense, set at an Italian villa with a dark history, for fans of Lucy Foley and Ruth Ware.
As kids, Emily and Chess were inseparable. But by their 30s, their bond has been strained by the demands of their adult lives. So when Chess suggests a girls trip to Italy, Emily jumps at the chance to reconnect with her best friend.
Villa Aestas in Orvieto is a high-end holiday home now, but in 1974, it was known as Villa Rosato, and rented for the summer by a notorious rock star, Noel Gordon. In an attempt to reignite his creative spark, Noel invites up-and-coming musician, Pierce Sheldon to join him, as well as Pierce’s girlfriend, Mari, and her stepsister, Lara. But he also sets in motion a chain of events that leads to Mari writing one of the greatest horror novels of all time, Lara composing a platinum album––and ends in Pierce’s brutal murder.
As Emily digs into the villa’s complicated history, she begins to think there might be more to the story of that fateful summer in 1974. That perhaps Pierce’s murder wasn’t just a tale of sex, drugs, and rock & roll gone wrong, but that something more sinister might have occurred––and that there might be clues hidden in the now-iconic works that Mari and Lara left behind.
Yet the closer that Emily gets to the truth, the more tension she feels developing between her and Chess. As secrets from the past come to light, equally dangerous betrayals from the present also emerge––and it begins to look like the villa will claim another victim before the summer ends.
Inspired by Fleetwood Mac, the Manson murders, and the infamous summer Percy and Mary Shelley spent with Lord Byron at a Lake Geneva castle––the birthplace of Frankenstein––The Villa welcomes you into its deadly legacy.
My thoughts:
I have been a fan of Rachel Hawkins since discovering her first thriller, The Wife Upstairs. This latest one is a gothic inspired mystery that I really enjoyed and I had the pleasure of doing a listenalong with the great folks from TandemCollective and a super fun bunch of bookstagrammers. You can see more about this over on my Instagram page.
This was such a binge-able story, one that once you really get into it, you find it hard to put down. I am a big fan of dual narratives, no matter the genre and I loved how it worked here. The added use of the podcasts and newspaper clippings give another perspective that I really appreciated. At times a slow burn, especially the past timeline – though still really engaging – I loved how the villa is what connects both timelines. A common refrain was repeated quite often throughout the story, “a house remembers,” and I felt that to be so hauntingly accurate the further we got into this story, especially as the dark past of the villa was revealed. The sense of setting was really fantastic.
This book is incredibly suspenseful as it pieces together what really happened in the past, but there is also the suspense of what is going on in the present. The girls’ friendship is questionable at times – are they truly friends or they frenemies? And what really happened to make Emily so sick?
I loved how twisty and dark this one was. The blurb says this is based on the Manson murders and since I really don’t know much about those, you know I’ll be heading down a rabbit hole to read up on them. But even without having that background knowledge, this is still a fun, entertaining read and I definitely recommend you add it to your list when it comes out in January!
Audio thoughts:
I listened to this one and thought the audio was really good. Of course, when I saw Julia Whelan was amongst the list of narrators, I was thrilled as she is one of my favorite audiobook narrators. The other narrators, Kimberly M. Wetherell and Shiromi Arserio were new to me, but I appreciated that there were different narrators for the different timelines and the extras – it helped to keep things separated in my mind. This book can be tricky to listen to for some with the inclusion of the newspaper clippings and the podcasts, but I had no issue with it.
