In 2023, Rachel Hawkins published The Villa: A Novel. This mystery book has an average rating of 3.6/5 on Goodreads, with 137,612 ratings.
I read this book in March of 2025 and rated it 5/5. My friend picked this up at the library and convinced me to read it.
Where to buy the book
Many bookstores carry this book and it is available for purchase. Retailers like Amazon ($9.02) and Barnes & Noble ($18.00). Most libraries will also have The Villa available for checkout.
Synopsis
Emily and Chess are both writers and BFFs. While Chess writes almost every day, Emily has not written in months. Chess plans a trip to Italy to cheer up Emily’s mood while she is in the process of divorcing her husband. Chess signs up for them to stay at a beautiful villa, not knowing that it is where a famous murder happened in the 1970s. In the 1970s, famous rock star Noel and his friends Pierce, Mari, and Lara stayed at the Villa.
In the villa’s library, Emily reads Mari’s famous book. After she finishes reading it, she starts noticing things about it inside the villa, and she starts to question whether Mari’s book was based on her real experience. While wondering this, Emily starts finding pieces of Mari’s journal around the house in secretly hidden places.
While there is one first-person narrative and one third-person dialogue, there are also more forms of media in the novel. There is a script from a podcast, articles, song lyrics, and passages from books in the novel. I think it is very unique and cool that Hawkins put all of these forms of media in this novel; it shows how much thought and work she put into the novel.
Age rating
Google recommends the book for ages 18+ due to the dual timeline, explicit language, infidelity, jealousy, and murder; however, I would say it is good for ages 14+. I do not understand why dual timeline is a reason; it says “which can be challenging for younger readers to follow,” but I think if a person can pick out this book, they should be able to understand books with dual timelines.
While I understand why explicit language is a reason for the age rating, I do not think it is all that reasonable. Of course, I understand that people under 10, who are not used to hearing that much explicit language, would not be picking out this book; however, I think that it would not be so crazy for people around 13 to read it, as they are more commonly exposed to language such as this.
Reviews
On Goodreads, there are 20,247 five-star reviews and 1,297 one-star reviews. Melissa posted a five-star review saying, “I was taken with The Villa immediately. By far, it has the tightest plotting I’ve seen from Hawkins to date. Both Mari and Emily’s storylines are intriguing and written skillfully, allowing Hawkins to draw interesting parallels between the lives of the two lead characters. She also does a great job of ratcheting up the intrigue by inserting news articles, song lyrics, and excerpts from Mari’s horror novel into the narrative.”
Obsidian posted a one-star review saying, “This was terrible. Like, I need better words for how awful this was. The different points of view (badly done). The excerpts from podcasts, articles, etc. (nope). And the twists. Absolutely not. The other characters felt very thin to me. I saw the Chess storyline coming a mile away, along with some others. I honestly just felt mostly bored by this book. It didn’t help that the switching POVs threw off the book, and the little excerpts from articles and podcasts were scattered throughout. I just started getting annoyed and wanted to get to the murder already, and what happened. And then we get a twist and another twist, and I rolled my eyes.”
