If We Were Villains

Seven Shakespearean actors. One dead body. A decade of secrets.

When Oliver Marks is released from prison after ten years, the detective who put him behind bars is waiting—still chasing the truth. And at last, Oliver is ready to tell it.

A decade earlier, Oliver was one of seven fiercely talented theater students at the elite Dellecher Classical Conservatory, where ambition ran high and obsession higher. Bound by their love of Shakespeare, the group blurred the lines between performance and reality, casting each other into roles—hero, villain, ingénue, tyrant—onstage and off.

But when their final year takes a dark turn, rivalries ignite and the drama spills into real life. One of them ends up dead. And the rest are left to deliver the performance of their lives: hiding what really happened that night.

Haunting, lyrical, and compulsively readable, If We Were Villains is a tale of friendship and betrayal, where art imitates life… and life imitates something far more dangerous.

If We Were Villains, now available with beautiful scarlet stained edges, was named one of Bustle's Best Thriller Novels of the Year.