★★★☆☆
Rachel Hawkins writes good escapist thrillers. Reckless Girls was deliciously wicked, and her Southern Gothic novel, The Wife Upstairs, had some fun twists. So, when I saw she had a new book, The Villa, I decided to check it out.
The Villa, which also falls in the thriller genre, features a story within a story. In the present day, estranged best friends Emily and Chess decide to go on a girls’ trip to Orvieto, Italy, to reconnect and find fresh inspiration for their writing careers.
While staying at the Villa Aestas, formerly the Villa Rosato, they discover that it was the site of a tragedy involving the friend of Noel Gordon, a famous rock star who used the home as a summer retreat in 1974.
The 1974 timeline catalogs the various drug-fueled liaisons between Gordon and his traveling companions – the rising star Pierce Sheldon, his 19-year-old girlfriend Mari, and her stepsister, Lara. These hookups result in Mari writing one of the greatest horror novels of all time, Lara composing a platinum album, and Sheldon turning up dead.
Emily becomes intrigued by the events that transpired at the villa that fateful summer – and her determination to find out what really happened begins to reignite her writing and her rivalry with Chess in a way that threatens their reconciliation.
Parts of The Villa were interesting to me, but the book didn’t hold my attention as much as my previous reads by Hawkins. I had difficulty finding a character to connect with in the story. Emily and Chess annoyed me for different reasons. The rock musicians and their adoring young women were drawn so hazily and stereotypically, perhaps in an attempt to convey their substance use and creativity, that I had a hard time keeping them straight.
I did find the last third of the book more interesting than the first two-thirds and was glad I hung in there for the surprises. Overall, it was satisfying enough that I still plan to pick up her newest release, The Heiress, and give it a read.