Books like If We Were Villains
by M. L. Rio · 2017
Updated June 2026
Book data: Open Library · Taste signals: BookTaste model
🎭 If We Were Villains is a dark academia mystery set inside a prestigious Shakespeare conservatory, where seven close-knit acting students blur the line between performance and reality — until one of them is found dead. Fans are hooked by the intoxicating atmosphere: velvet theatres, candlelit rehearsals, classical verse woven into every argument, and a group of brilliant, dangerous people who love each other too much. The book asks whether guilt can belong to a whole ensemble, and it never quite lets you answer.
Picked by taste overlap — not popularity alone.
What to read next
The Secret History
Donna Tartt · 1992
🎭 Dark Academia🖤 Moral Ambiguity💀 Gothic Atmosphere🖤 The undisputed godfather of dark academia: a tight group of classics students at a Vermont college commit a murder and spend the novel unraveling under collective guilt, with the same intoxicating blend of privilege, beauty, and moral rot that defines If We Were Villains.
- Matches
- elite students hiding a murder · unreliable close-knit ensemble · classical literature saturates the prose
- Differs
- longer, denser, more novelistic pace · Greek not Shakespearean focus · no theatrical performance element
- Skip if
- You want a tighter plot and shorter runtime — The Secret History is immersive but slow by design.
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●●● strong · ●●○ medium · ●○○ light · ○○○ none
Solid = this book · dashed = If We Were Villains
Ninth House
Leigh Bardugo · 2019
🎭 Dark Academia💀 Gothic Atmosphere🔪 Literary Mystery🔪 Yale's secret societies are real and practice actual dark magic — Bardugo transplants the premise of brilliant, broken students inside a venerable institution into full supernatural horror, keeping the same sense that elite spaces harbour genuine evil.
- Matches
- prestigious institution concealing violence · morally grey protagonist · literary, atmospheric prose
- Differs
- explicit fantasy / magic system · solo protagonist not ensemble · graphic violence and trauma
- Skip if
- You want realism and Shakespeare — Ninth House goes fully supernatural and graphic.
Solid = this book · dashed = If We Were Villains
Bunny
Mona Awad · 2019
🎭 Dark Academia🖤 Moral Ambiguity💀 Gothic Atmosphere🐰 A toxic MFA cohort descends into surreal horror — Awad captures the claustrophobic intensity of artists who define themselves entirely through their craft and their circle, turning workshop jealousy and literary obsession into something genuinely disturbing.
- Matches
- insular creative academic group · performance and identity blur · dark satirical edge
- Differs
- surrealist / horror genre, not realism · female ensemble, no murder mystery · comedic and grotesque tone
- Skip if
- You need a clear mystery structure — Bunny is deliberately strange and genre-defying.
Solid = this book · dashed = If We Were Villains
Not similar books. Similar taste.
It reads the grain of every book you've loved — why it stayed with you — and follows that thread to your next read. Not the bestseller list, not the crowd: just your taste. Free, no signup.
Add books you've read; BookTaste builds your taste radar and recommends from it.
Taste radar — read from the themes shared across If We Were Villains and the picks below
Strongest taste signals: 🎭 Dark Academia · 🔪 Literary Mystery · 🖤 Moral Ambiguity
How taste signals are generated
BookTaste's model reads the themes, moods, settings, and reader hooks of the base book, then scores every pick across those same axes — what overlaps, what diverges. Ordered by taste fit, not by popularity.
Goes deeper
A Little Life
Hanya Yanagihara · 2015
🤝 Ensemble Drama🖤 Moral Ambiguity💘 Queer Subtext💔 Four college friends whose lives intertwine for decades — Yanagihara shares the same devotion to an ensemble bound by loyalty, art, and shared catastrophe, pushing the emotional devastation of deep friendship to its absolute limit.
- Matches
- lifelong ensemble of artists · trauma and guilt shape relationships · emotionally overwhelming
- Differs
- no mystery plot, not academia-set · far longer and more traumatic · no classical literature framework
- Skip if
- You cannot handle extreme depictions of abuse and trauma — this book is famously harrowing.
Solid = this book · dashed = If We Were Villains
The Maidens
Alex Michaelides · 2021
🔪 Literary Mystery🎭 Dark Academia📖 Classic Allusions🎭 A Cambridge professor becomes obsessed with a secret society of female students called the Maidens, led by a charismatic Greek tragedy professor suspected of murder — it recycles the same ingredients of classical texts, elite students, and campus murder.
- Matches
- elite campus murder mystery · classical literature as obsession · atmospheric British academia
- Differs
- outside investigator perspective, not insider student · thriller pacing not literary · weaker character depth
- Skip if
- You prioritise complex characters over plot — The Maidens is more thriller than literary fiction.
Solid = this book · dashed = If We Were Villains
- Babel, or the Necessity of Violence
Babel, or the Necessity of Violence
R. F. Kuang · 2022
🎭 Dark Academia📖 Classic Allusions🖤 Moral Ambiguity📖 Oxford's translation institute holds the secret to colonial power — Kuang builds a dark academia world soaked in classical language, a brilliant tight-knit student cohort, and the same question of whether individuals bear collective moral responsibility for the institutions they serve.
- Matches
- elite institution, brilliant misfit cohort · classical languages and texts central · moral complicity and collective guilt
- Differs
- alternate history fantasy setting · explicitly political and anti-colonial · more plot-driven with action sequences
- Skip if
- You want contemporary realism — Babel is alternate-history fantasy with a political thesis.
Solid = this book · dashed = If We Were Villains
Frequently asked
- Is If We Were Villains part of a series or a standalone?
- It is a standalone novel — M. L. Rio has not written a sequel, and the ending is designed to be deliberately open. You get one complete, self-contained story.
- Do I need to know Shakespeare to enjoy If We Were Villains?
- Not at all, though knowing the plays adds a layer. Rio weaves in enough context that the Shakespeare functions atmospherically even if you've never read a word of it — the emotions land without the footnotes.
- What should I read if I want something as literary as If We Were Villains but more of a pure thriller?
- Try The Maidens by Alex Michaelides — it leans harder on plot momentum while keeping the Cambridge setting and classical-literature obsession. If you want the literary density dialled up even further, go straight to The Secret History.
- Are any of these books as queer as If We Were Villains?
- 🏳️🌈 If We Were Villains is notably queer in its central relationships. A Little Life and Bunny are the closest in that regard among the picks. The Secret History has queer subtext but keeps it more implicit — very much a product of its 1992 publication.
Book data and covers from Open Library. Picks and taste signals are generated by BookTaste's taste model.