This was exactly what I would anticipate from this author. I loved it!! Full of drama, suspense and a villa in Italy with a murderous past. Two best friends and authors retreat to a villa to relax and work. With a dual timeline and sub-plots, this one will keep you on your toes.

Thanks to NetGalley for the free advance ereader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Rachel Hawkins just gets better and better and The Villa, a gothic mystery / thriller set in an Italian villa in Orvieto, is her best yet. The main character is the villa itself, site of a 1970s murder. Someone dies among the musician and writer friends - Mari, Lara, Pierce, Noel and Johnnie - while Mari writes a novel - and a secret diary. Who died and who dunnit? We won’t know the first answer until midway through the novel and as for the second … no spoilers!

It’s also the setting for a 2020s getaway for best friends and writers Emily and Chess. Emily is a cozy mystery writer who becomes interested in the history of the house and the infamous murder. She’s also reeling from divorce proceedings in which her ex, Matt, wants a cut of her earnings, both past and future. Chess is a self help writer and guru. Will they reconnect? Collaborate on a book? Again, wait and see.

Captivating and surprising until the shocking conclusion, you’ll be thinking about The Villa long after it’s over. Five stars. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Villa is an ambitious work of fiction even though I found the ending to a bit lackluster. The two stories present day Emily and Chess and past Mari and Lara felt all over the place and in my opinion never tied together intricately or neatly. However, this was still an enjoyable read overall. 3.5 stars

Rachel Hawkins does it again with another perfect thriller. My favorite part of her thrillers is that they combine a lot of different aspects: mystery, psychological, action. All three are here and told through a dramatic story.

Emily and Chess have been best friends since grade school. They see each other a few times a year as life has gotten busy for them as adults. They meet for lunch and plan a summer getaway to a Villa in Italy. They are both authors and they plan to work on their respective books and soak up the Italian atmosphere. The Villa is beautiful but it turns out to have a tragic past. In the summer of 1974 Mari and her wanna be rock star boyfriend Pierce stay at the same Villa with her step sister and 2 other men. This is told in dual timelines alternating between present day and 1974.
I enjoyed this book but I didn't really like the ending. I saw things going differently between Emily and Chess and the ending with the 1974 timeline was confusing.
Thank you to NetGalley and the Publisher for a copy of this book for review.

Thanks netgalley for the chance to read this book! This is my first book by Rachel Hawkins! The two story lines went and meshed together very well but there was something missing. The ending just didn’t do it for me. The story with the husband.. that was very predictable and I saw it coming. Overall it was an ok book.

A great suspense book. If you love Reckless Girls, you'll love this book too. Two sets of women tied together even though they are decades apart. Very twisty and addictive. The ending shows how well-plotted the novel is. Love the description of Italy too. An excellent book for people who love gothic suspense novels.

Thanks to the publisher for the arc.

Rachel Hawkins has become one of my favorite authors. Each book she writes are simply magic. Her character development and plot lines are intertwined beautifully to the point where I’m up late reading because i simply needs to know what happens next. I adored The Villa and i think fans of her work will too. Thank you NetGalley & the publisher for the ARC in an exchange for an honest review, I’m so grateful.

The Villa by Rachel Hawkins is a dual timeline twisty suspenseful thriller that alternates between Mari in 1974 & Emily in present day. An Italian Villa, Author protagonists. Rock stars. Need I say more? Highly recommend!!!

Rachel Hawkins has done it again. She has spun a tale of intrigue and suspense, along with interwoven relevant flashbacks, to tell a tale of love, loss, and what happens to a lover spurned.

Sadly I wanted to love this more than I did. It was written well I just could not connect with the characters or storyline. However I do believe fans of The Paris Apartment will adore this book and find themselves attached to the story.

Rachel Hawkins delivers another thriller that I could not put down, and The Villa quickly became my favorite of hers to date! Told from two perspectives and two time periods, the story unfolds with twists and complexities that kept me up until I finished it. Emily and Chess are childhood best friends, and their story centers around a summer trip to a villa in Italy - the Villa Aestas - with flashbacks to early times in their friendship. Mari and Lara are stepsisters, and their story centers around a summer trip in 1974 to a villa in Italy - Villa Rosato - with flashbacks to earlier times. There are friendships, betrayals, sex, drugs, and rock & roll, and again - the twists and revelations that happen along the way - will make you not be able to put this book down either. Highly recommend!!

This is the second book I’ve read by Ms. Hawkins. I enjoyed “The Wife Upstairs” very much and gifted it to a family member who also liked it. “The Villa” was equally as good though it was a totally different type of storyline and genre.

The method of combining past and present stories and their alternatives for the people who stayed at Villa Rosa/Aestas was very imaginative and attention-keeping. This, along with the idea of writing a book-within-a-book, was very unique and engaging. I enjoy historical novels and this one reminded me very much of that genre.

Neither of the main characters, Chess and Em, were really likeable. I found weaknesses in each that were a bit aggravating but I continued to read about them nonetheless.

I will definitely recommend this book to those who enjoy travel to Italy as well as 70’s rock and roll performers. Readers who like reading about the writing process will also enjoy this book.

I definitely am a fan of the author’s writing style and will read more of her work.

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

The Villa by Rachel Hawkins checked all of the boxes for me! It is a hot summer, psychological thriller with a past/present style that was written exceptionally well! I was personally excited to see that the past was set in the summer of 1974 as I was born that year. While I was hooked from the beginning, it is not a book that I quickly skipped through to get to the end. The writing and storylines are so satisfying that reading every page was enjoyable. The relationships between the pairs of women from the past and the present as well as their career trajectories and personal struggles were a refreshing and captivating part of the story as the secrets from the summer at the Villa were unraveled. This is my favorite Rachel Hawkins book, and I highly recommend it. Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the ARC!

Thank you to Netgalley, Rachel Hawkins and St. Martin's Press for this eARC. This is my first book by Rachel Hawkins and I will be reading more by her.

The story is about 2 sets of women in different periods of time tied by staying at a Villa in Italy. The book had me captivated from the beginning wanting to know what happened, who did what and how they were all tied together. I was not disappointed, getting to know the characters was fun and finding twists and breadcrumbs along the way kept me intrigued.

Thank you again Rachel Hawkins for a great fun summer read.

The mood in this book is the best part - the eerie undertones to everything really bring it all together. I always enjoy the book within a book technique and I wish I could read more of Lilith Rising as it sounds really intriguing. I hate Chess as a character and the annoying influencers she’s based on, but I think that means Hawkins did her job.

After getting over a sophomore slump, I’m excited for Hawkins’ next novel. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is my first by Rachel Hawkins. It was a quick read. Some mystery and suspense. I was drawn in from the beginning and it had such a strong start. But the end/climax was rushed, too fast (lots of details were skipped right through), and unbelievable. Overall, at 288 pages, there was plenty of time for all this to be more fleshed out.
Thanks NetGalley for the eARC

A well written novel about two sets of two women at two distinct times in an Italian villa. Love does not run smoothly in either time period, and the twists of plot between the two have mirror qualities even while not being reflections at all. One of the earlier twosome leaves a written record that was revealed gradually to one of the later two in a clever manner. I was a captive to the pages—a great read!

This was a lot of fun. A real summer book. I liked the Lilith Rising chapters and the flashbacks to the 1970s. The current day storyline was solid. I like reading about writers and influencers so this hit that! I did wish we learned a little bit more about Chess and her motivations. That seemed a little flat to me. I also felt like the ending was very abrupt but I enjoyed the rest of the book a lot.

Ugh!!! This was so good! Unlike the majority of the book community, I have never read Rachel Hawkins but I loved this one. Nothing gets me like dual POV, alternating timelines, and what I consider an unreliable narrator