I was really hoping this was going to be a page turning thriller. I was left wanting. I found absolutely every reason to set this one down in favor of other books, so much so that it’s taken me almost three months to finish it.

The idea of history repeating itself drew me in. Two childhood friends spending six weeks in Italy in this gorgeous villa where a murder occurred sounded delightful. Delightful might not be the right word when referring to a murder, but it sounded intriguing.

I found myself skimming and hoping for the next glimpse into the opposite timeline because I found the majority of it dull.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this arc in exchange for an honest review.

I received an Advanced Reader copy from Netgalley for my honest review. Rachel Hawkins did a fabulous job writing this novel about a Villa and all that the House remembers. There are two parallel story lines from different decades. The story from 1974 mentions famous musicians. I pictured Lara’s album as successful as Carole King’s Tapestry album. The sex, drugs, and rock and roll of the residents of Villa Rosato become the story of Lilith Rising and Aestas. Meanwhile Em and Chess have their own secrets, which are revealed like the layers of an onion. Another story, The Villa, rises out of their time spent at Villa Aestas. What price is paid to find happiness? This novel will have you drawn into the lives of all who stay at THE VILLA. Outstanding writing! Definitely a five star! This book will be a bestseller in 2023!

The Villa by Rachel Hawkins gave me major travel fever (as did Reckless Girls). I am now jonesing for a trip to an Italian Villa. The book follows dual timelines of Mari and Lara who are stepsisters following a bad boy rockstar boyfriends and Emily & Chess are BFF's but haven't been as close in the last several years.

The book primarily takes place for both timelines at Villa Aestas where a muder takes place. Set in the 70's Mari and Lara head to the villa with uber-famous rockstar Noel and up and coming rock star, Pierce. There is also Noel's drug dealer Johnny that comes along with them. Present day, Emily and Chess are both authors and are wanting to escape to Italy for some quality time and writing. Emily writes cozy mystery books and Chess writes self help.

While staying at the Villa, Emily becomes facinated with the muder that took place in the 70s and where Mari wrote her bestselling book "Lilith Rising". Lara also wrote music and produced a great album named "Aestas". Do the book and music provide clues to what happened that fateful day decades before or is it all in Emily's head?

Overall I really enjoyed the book, but found the characters pretty unlikeable and I found myself getting Mari and Lara confused the entire book and who was with who. I also wish the book had been formatted differently with each chapter being past or present. I found the chapters a little long and muddy to get through. While I did prefer Reckless Girls and The Wife Upstairs more, I still liked the 70s vibe of Mari and Lara and the Villa.

I was wrong about this book.
Toward the end, I thought I had the story figured out. I was pretty disappointed.
But then the twists that came weren't at all what I expected.
This book is a really good time. It's rare that I enjoy both timelines in a dual-timeline book equally, but here I did. And I really appreciated how the storylines wove together -- and how they didn't.

I've read a few of Hawkins' books, and this was my favorite thus far.

My students like books that involved houses with murders, horror stories and this book contains all that plus lots of topics for discussion. What is friendship, when is it good and when is it harmful, what about relationships with our partners and our sisters. How does competition spurs us on and when is it destructive? What does it mean to be a victim or a villain. How do women get viewed and how to own their own lives. Lots of likely discussion would follow.

I ended up liking this book a lot. It had a strong engaging start and while parts of it were slow, it had a satisfying ending. Friendships and love, competition between friends and sisters, what part of relationships are worth keeping despite the parts that are toxic. There are two books within this book, a horror story, then the story of the author of that book, her husband and her sister and the tragedy that happened at the villa and then the contemporary story of two friends and the book one of them was writing about the villa. At times, it got a bit confusing about whose mother was x, who child was y . Overall a good read, different from the author's previous works 4.5

This one started a little slow for me and I actually put it down for a bit, but then I picked it back up and was glad. Ilove this author so had to give it a fair shot.

The way the story ties with the present and past was well written. It ended beautifully and I don't think there could have been more added. Overall 4 stars. Can't wait for her next book.

Alternating between present and past timelines, Rachel Hawkins has done it again. In the present timeline, Emily and Chess are old best friends. Both are authors, Emily writing fiction while Chess writes non-fiction. Coming off a bad break-up with her now-ex-husband, Emily is invited to join Chess in Italy for the summer. Staying at a proper murder villa, the location of an infamous murder in the 70s, the two writers reconnect and are reminded of why their friendship has lasted for decades. Truly unputdownable, highly recommend!


Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for this eARC.

I feel like the first thing I want to say is “ick!!!” but in a good way 😂

There were so many twists and turns, not only in the main story but also in the story within the story. There would be a plot twist I would see coming and then at the last minute another, more startling plot twist would happen at the same time. Twists! And! Turns!

For almost as long as they can remember, Emily and Chess have been best friends. For so long, in fact, that they knew each other before they became best-selling authors of very different kinds of books, and before they became the women they really are behind them.

But life is busy and messy and complicated, so when Chess invites Emily to stay at an Italian villa for the summer, things don’t look like they could be any more perfect.

When they arrive, however, Emily begins immediately digging into the history of the Villa - where, decades prior, a clash between five aspiring artists of different forms lead to one of their deaths.

But the further into the twisted history Emily digs, the more complex it seems to be. And while nobody from that fateful summer has ever told the full story of what happened that night, the Villa remembers. And when some of Emily’s experiences begin to parallel those of the ones who came before her, it looks like history may repeat itself. And soon.

Wow this was a mind trip for sure! Absolutely fantastic! This is the best I've read from Rachel Hawkins for sure. You think you know, and then, wow, man that ending! The writing really made me feel for Mari, Lara, and Emma. This was a perfect read for right before Halloween season
Thank you for allowing me to read this through NetGalley.

Thank you Netgalley & publisher for this e arc of The Villa by Rachel Hawkins .
This is a suspense-thriller novel. 3-4*.
Synopsis: " 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. .. As Emily digs into the villa’s complicated history (dual time-line),... 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."
3 things I liked:
1. The genre
2. 1/2 of the story line; I rarely like a dual as I always like one half more
3. Gothic suspense Italian villa was a unique setting for a novel
3 things I disliked:
1. The pace- to slow for me, skipped much of the middle
2. I do not like a friend- enemies start- it is not relatable
3. I did not connect with the MCs in either timeline
I was glad to read this one.

Houses remember.

This statement which is used various times through the book holds such deep meaning. Introducing the book with this line, gives the reader the opportunity to think about what it means, what will happen and how will it end? As such, it immediately makes the the book a page turner.

With the effortless back and forth between past and present, the reader is taken on a journey to actually witness what the house will in fact remember. The setting being in no other picturesque backdrop, Italy, you think what can go wrong with a group of friends escaping to a villa as a retreat. Sure a little partying, some recklessness and a whole lot of “working” should be no harm.

However as the details unfold while Em is researching/writing her next book we see that it was not just harmless play. As the story escalates we see how each character struggles with their personal life and career.

The parallel between worlds goes to show that deep down when angered and hurt, people will do things you never saw coming.

The way Rachel Hawkins crafted the present story while diving into the past through the current day characters was genius. You grew attached to all the characters in both storylines and rooted for them all no matter their actions (good or bad). The twisted ending wrapped up the book in a perfect bow leaving the reader jaw dropped.

A special thank you to St. Martins Press for the early release copy.

In The Villa, we are presented with a dual time line exploration of friendship, love, and hate, set within the same Italian Villa in a small town called Orvieto.

Emily and Jessica "Chess" are on again-off again BFFS, renting the Italian Villa Aestas for the summer in 2022, seeking to reconnect and find inspiration for their books, as they are both writers.

Mari is staying in the villa in the summer of 1974 with her wannabe rockstar boyfriend Pierce, her stepsister Lara, legitimate rockstar Noel Gordan and his drug dealer Johnnie. Things go awry, tensions come to a head and someone ends up murdered, remaking the villa into a "Murder House".

The eponymous Villa in this novel is a cozy and cheery place, certainly not how one would imagine a murder house. The setting does not lend any tension to the book itself, and the first 35% percent or so presents and women's fiction with friendship and relationship drama.

Obviously we know all is not as it seems in 1974. We know someone ends up dead at the end of the summer in Mario's time line, and the victim is revealed fairly early on, with this book building up to how that person is killed, and why. In the modern time line, Emily becomes obsessed with the novel Mari published after that summer, noted some similarities to the villa and becomes wrapped up in a book about that doomed summer.

All is not as it seems between Emily and Chess, with tensions between them coming to a head as well. I admit the plot I suspected in my own head as I was reading was off, but I felt like there was unexplored potential there that just dropped off.

All in all. I enjoyed Mario's story and felt that Emily's time line has potential but the ending was fairly lackluster. It felt like the author ran out of steam and decided to just wrap it up, very quickly. The novel does read quickly and I enjoyed it overall, so 3 stars to this one.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the electronic ARC of this novel for review.

I am a fan of this author but found this book to be slow. But I think it was the premise itself that did not entice. .

A murder house? I just cannot get with this storyline, it just doesn’t work for me as I find it so unbelievable. The execution of this was subpar and I wasn’t invested in the dual timelines as I felt the 1974 one dragged.

The Villa by Rachel Hawkins
4 Stars
The Villa is another mystery/thriller by the always imaginative Rachel Hawkins. This time, she takes us to Italy where a villa with a tragic past is available to rent. It seems like the perfect place for Emily to reconnect with her best friend, Chess, as Emily is struggling with a mysterious illness, problems at work, and a nasty divorce. As Emily begins digging into the history of the house, she also learns things about her present that threaten to derail her life even more.
Told across two timelines, The Villa is filled enough twists and turns to keep the reader guessing. I wish the setting had been fleshed out some more (the book is named in its honor, after all) and I wish we had answers to some questions, such as Emily’s illness and where were those mysterious pages hidden? However, I very much enjoyed the feminist aspects of this book. I recommend this book to anyone who has enjoyed the author’s books before and others who like mysteries and thrillers. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my review.

I usually love Rachel Hawkins books, in fact the last two were 5 star reads for me. Unfortunately, this one was extremely slow and I just couldn’t get into the stories or the characters, perhaps it was the rock n roll I’ve that turned me off, but it I had to DNF this one about half-way through.

👍 What I liked: This was a brilliantly-written novel, and an excellent piece of work by Hawkins! I enjoyed the dual timelines, the story-within-a-story, and how in the end, everything just starts to come together and make sense, making the reader go "Oooh!". The ending was completely shocking and unexpected, as should any good murder-mystery novel!

👎 What I didn't like: The story did start a bit slowly in my opinion. I wasn't immediately hooked nor convinced about this book. Some chapters were rather long, and some transitions between timelines were choppy and a bit confusing, and should have had chapters of their own. However, I'm glad I stuck it through, and the ending is what made me rate this book with 4 stars instead of three!

TWs: maternal death, loss of a child, homicide (may not be an exhaustive list)

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin's press for my free eARC in exchange for an honest review!

This was good - though to call it a thriller is a bit of a misnomer. It was more of a drama surrounding a mystery murder. I thought the ending was pretty obvious the whole time, but she works hard to make even the obvious a bit surprising and it works.

The Villa, Rachel Hawkin's latest twisty-turney thriller, is the type of book that gets under your skin and hides out in your soul for hours after reading the last page. I found myself spellbound by every single character and racing through the book to see what would happen next. While reading, I was fully engaged and hooked from the beginning, The time-hop added so much depth to the storyline and each character (present and past) was vital to the flow and growth of the mystery. I was entertained, intrigued and unbelievably gripped throughout. Now to check out other Rachel Hawkins books and wait patiently for this one to hit bookstores.