I don't usually enjoy stories about famous people, but this book seems to be the exception, given that I finished The Villa in one sitting. Rachel Hawkins somehow managed to juggle multiple timelines and make it look good.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest and fair review.

After reading both The Wife Upstairs and Reckless Girls and being underwhelmed, I was apprehensive to read this one. But turns out I LOVED it. I have been thinking about this book since I finished it. Told in dual timelines, you have a pair of friends reconnecting in an italian villa where an infamous murder took place. We bounce back and forth between the time leading up to the murder and the current timeline and for this story, it was very effective. There is also a lot about a fictional book within this book and I found myself really wanting to read it! It also has a Wylding Hall vibe to it which I loved.
It also explores toxic relationships and picking your life back up after it has fallen apart. The narrators did a great job and I was just so pleasantly surprised. Highly recommend!

THE VILLA by Rachel Hawkins and narrated by Julia Whelan, Kimberly M Wetherell, and Shiromi Arserio.

4.5 Stars!

This atmospheric story begins with cozy mystery writer Emily meeting up with her childhood best friend Chess who is now a best-selling author of self-help books. Emily's life is not moving in the same direction as Chess, and when Chess invites her for a 6 week stay in an Italian villa, Emily can't refuse. This particular villa has quite a backstory with a brutal murder back in the mid 1970's. Emily's curiosity wins over her cozy mystery block, and she begins to find clues that tie into the murder. What really happened back then? This newfound energy is offset by some new tension building with Chess. Is this villa cursed and about to claim another victim?

I really liked this suspenseful audiobook! First, the story was a fantastic mix of wondering if the two were friends or frenemies. The past murder story was a slow build worth nibbling. The dual timeline that slowly pieced the 1970's story into the bits that Emily discovered was delicious. It felt like a slow melting of narratives until the last when it was ripped back apart. I had to listen to the end twice. The equivalent of a double-take. I really liked the finish, and I wonder if there will be more (I hope not though - I liked it ending here).

I do think that questionable friendships are great fodder for stories, but I hope we all make better choices than some of these characters!

The cast of narrators were superb. The sinister undertone was perfectly placed within the almost innocent conversations. The voices captured the wavering trust in themselves and each other.

Thank you so much to @netgalley and @macmillan.audio for this ALC. I thoroughly enjoyed this and recommend it to all suspense fans. Definitely put this on your list for January 3rd! We all need a bit of an Italian summer in January, right?!

So good! The ending was amazing, and had a twist I didn’t see coming. This book had multiple viewpoints, mixed in with podcast transcripts, articles, etc, fantastic!

Sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Another super fun psychological thriller from Rachel Hawkins! Told in dual timelines, this gothic thriller weaves together two separate stories that leave you guessing until the very end.

While the 1970s murder mystery will leave you wanting answers, it's the complicated present day friendship of Emily and Chess that I was especially drawn to. Best friends or bitter rivals? What exactly is going on here?

The audiobook narration was extremely well done. As always, Julia Whelan is superb. If this is your genre, go for it!

Slightly predictable, but an entertaining and atmospheric thriller nonetheless! I enjoyed the dial timelines and the compelling depiction of a toxic female friendship.

This is a unique story like nothing I e ever read before. Mystery and secrets intersect multiple story lines and provide many twists. The characters are written with depth and complexity.

I was so excited to read The Villa, after having loved The Reckless Girls by the same author. This book started out slow and I was interested in the two different POV and the articles between the chapters from various newspapers and podcasts. I was expecting it to pick up a little and to have a little bit of suspense. But it never really did. This book was a very slow burn that had a surprising twist, that I found myself to not really care about. I felt that the chapters were long and drawn out, and the characters were not very likeable in my opinion. I ended up listening to this one as an audio and did enjoy the performance of the narrators. The audio definitely helped me get through this book faster than if I had read it.

Thank you to NetGalley, St Martin’s Press, Macmillan Audio, and Rachel Hawkins for providing me with this gifted ebook and audio in exchange for my honest review.

BOOK REVIEW: THE VILLA

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Drink rec: Aperol Spritz

Lemme start off by saying I was OBSESSED with the setting- a gothic house in Italy with a dark past?! I’m here for it! This story features childhood besties Emily and Chess who go to this Italian Villa for a girls trip to reconnect after they had fallen out of touch.

There’s also a dual storyline that goes into what happened in the villa in the ‘70s featuring a rockstar, his love interest, and their group of friends whose time in the house ended when someone was murdered.

Pick this one up if you’re looking for:
🔍Mystery
🔀Dual storylines
⁉️Twisty ending
🏚Atmospheric setting

Overall, this was a fun binge read (or listen in my case!) and I’d recommend it if you are looking for something that will hook you in! It comes out on January 3rd! Thank you to @netgalley and @stmartinspress for my gifted copies!

When two friends take a month long trip to Italy to stay in the rumored Murder House what could go wrong?

Em's best friend Jessica (aka Chess) and fellow writer has invited her on a month long trip to stay in a Villa in Italy to reconnect as friends and to help work on their respective pieces they are writing. Dealing with her divorce and recent health problems Em agrees to go and starts to research more about the house they are staying in, what the town calls the Murder House.

Is this trip really what the two friends need or will the history the house holds and Em's ex husband tear the two friends apart??

I enjoyed the two timelines between Em and Chess and the past with Mary and her time at the Villa. The multiple readers also helped keep whose timeline you were in straight (I always enjoy multiple readers when it involves more that one timeline or character perspective). This was definitely an easy listen that I got through in a day.

The Villa is a dual timeline novel that will suck you right in from page one. Emily and Chess are best friends since childhood, but haven’t spent as much time together since Chess’s self help career has taken off. Her golden advice has landed her book at the top of the charts and her hiney on Oprah’s couch, while Emily’s book career feels stagnant and her marriage is falling apart. In an attempt to reconnect, the two women spend a summer at Villa Aestas, a home with a storied past, in Italy. Here they hope each can work on their respective book deadlines and when they aren’t writing spend time exploring nearby Orvieto.

In 1974 Villa Aestas was known as Villa Rosato, a name it lost after a fateful summer. Noel Gordon rents the villa for the summer to reignite is musical career, inviting up and comer Pierce Sheldon to join him. Pierce is stoked to work with Noel and brings his girlfriend Mari along, who also brings her sister Lara in tow. The group, along with an assistant, spend the summer jamming and drinking the summer away until one stormy night everything comes to a head. Pierce ends up dead on the living room floor and no one really knows what happened.

That fateful summer of ’74 inspired the women in the villa for certain. Mari ended up writing one of the greatest horror novels of all time, and Lara to wrote her best selling album Aestas. Emily bored of her current novel, one of many in a series wants to know what happened in the home she is staying in and how much of Mari’s book and Lara’s album can help her to find out.

The Villa is a twisty thriller that finds a way to intertwine the past and the present in so many ways, but will the future mirror the past too much? Thank you to Netgalley, Macmillan Audio, and of course Rachel Hawkins for the advanced copy of the audiobook. The Villa is out on January 3rd. All opinions are my own.

This book follows two separate timelines at the Villa, one in modern time and the other in the 1970s. The timelines tell of separate tragedies a summer at the estate brings. I thoroughly enjoyed the dual timeline as it kept me engaged. The plot was easy to follow without being predictable. As a long time Hawkins fan you won’t be disappointed in this book!

I just finished listening to The Villa. I LOVE Julia Whalen as a reader. Her voice is distinctive and has such good inflection for humor and seriousness. The Villa was a great story and really kept my attention. My husband and I listened to it on our 13 hour drive to Houston TX. I'd stop it now and then for breaks to make sure we were on the right highway and my husband was always wanting me to start the audiobook because he was so engrossed in the story! That's the sign of a good book!!

Thank you Netgalley for this audio edition of The Villa by Rachel Hawkins.

I have a very hit and miss relationship with Hawkins, one of my reviews was a 4 star, one of them was a 2 star. Well, I'm getting closer to a bingo, because this was a solid 3 stars.

Chess has been Emily's best friend for years, but Chess has also launched her career into orbit, earning her a lot of wealth and fame. Emily, not so much. After being sick with an unknown illness for some time, she is now coming down from a divorce. But even with the busy demands of their lives, Chess suggests a trip to Italy at a beautiful and luxurious Villa. Emily loves the idea of Italy, but she knows about the history of that certain Villa and isn't certain that she's ready to stay at a place where a murder happened.

It doesn't take long into the trip for the friendship to start feeling a strain. Emily is obsessed with the events that took place where they are staying. On top of that, she's starting to suspect that Chess hasn't really been as good of a friend as she thought she was...

As weird as it sounds, I could have done without the story in the 70's. I know that the whole story was centered around uncovering those secrets, but I just never cared. I really only cared about the friendship between Emily and Chess, and even that was lukewarm at best. The ending was not reassuring, and none of it was all that believable.

This was a fun quick read for me. Did I like the characters? Well, not so much, but Hawkins kept the story within a story moving right along and I was hooked. Plus, “ Houses Remember”. I’m always a sucker for a story set in a beautiful old house ( Trained by Nancy Drew 🤣).
Recommended for Hawkins fans.

Rachel Hawkins has done it again. She knows how to take you on a journey with so many twists and turns. There are two different stories happening at two different time periods that intertwine beautifully. The narrator tells this story so beautifully, the perfect narrator for this book. This is a must listen for any fan of suspense, highly recommend.

I love audiobooks and The Villa by Rachel Hawkins does not disappoint! This book was twisty and full of mystery. It pulled me in right away. I listened for hours at the time because the narration was excellent and I HAD to know what happened next.

Best friend drama, plot twist, gothic twist, secrets, luscious Italian villa,...this book will have you stopping along the way asking....wait, what? Holy moly did that just happen?

The book is super fast paced. If you are looking for a book that will grab your attention and take you on a twisty ride, this one is for you!

Thank you to NetGalley and MacMillan Audio for this ALC.

This book was amazing, I can’t believe my friend who also had an ARC said she didn’t care for it! I can’t wait for it to come out so my book club can read it. Rachel Hawkins does it again!

I've been ITCHING to read this one since Hawkins always knocks it out of the park. Personally, this one fell a little short than her other novels. Though I did like it, it is not my favorite of hers. The audio book is hard to follow as it switches back and forth between timelines (though they have different accents to help), but I will add a disclaimer that I am not an audiobook person!

The story with Emily and Chess was infuriating because Chess is. I grew more and more irritated and wanted to smack her. This made me that much more invested in Emily's story though. Kept trying to guess how her story would unfold and I was wrong every time. Hawkins keeps you guessing until LITERALLY the last page.

The time jumps were interesting. Hawkins gives you just enough of the respective stories to keep you switching the page. Mari and Laura were similar to Emily and Chess. One seems to have everything while the other has "nothing". The dynamic between the characters in the 1974 timeline were......wow. It was cool to see that side compared to the current timeline and how different society is.

Though it's not my favorite Hawkins book, I still recommend reading! Like i said, it likely fell short for me due to it being an audio version (I'm a sucker for a physical book)

Emily and Chess were nearly conjoined as kids. Both wanting to be writers and even thinking of writing a book together As with many of us, they grew apart as they grew older. Emily married and wrote a cozy mystery series. Chess went on to become a self help pied piper with great success and the income that comes with that. The two reconnect when Chess is in town for a book signing, While Emily is going through a difficult and financially devastating divorce, Chess is riding high. Much to Emily's surprise, Chess invites Emily to come to Italy for the summer with her, Emily thinks this may be what she needs to help her focus on delivering the overdue next volume of her series.
They are staying at the fabulous Villa Aestas, a luxurious holiday rental in Orvieto.. It is also an infamous property where, in 1974, a notorious, but fading rock star, Noel Gordon, came in search of his own musical inspiration. To that end he invited a a talented musician whose star was on the rise, Pierce Sheldon, to join him. Pierce brought his girlfriend, Mary and her stepsister, Lara.. It is during this tumultuous stay that lovers' trysts, drugs, music and writing had it's crescendo in the Mary's writing one of the greatest horror novels of all time, Lara composed a beloved platinum album, Aestos, and Pierce was brutally murdered..
Emily is intrigued by the history of the house and begins to delve into the story,. She becomes obsessed with the Aestos album as well as Mary's book., looking for clues into what she believes is more than a sex, drugs and rock and roll story. gone awry,. She believes something more malevolent was behind the evens of that fateful summer.
As Emily became more and more enveloped in the mystery, things with Chess became more strained. She was suspicious of Chess's motivation in inviting her here and annoyed with the unsolicited advice that Chess was giving her regarding her pending divorce. She also felt judged by her old friend, as if her books were not as worthy as those Chess wrote.
Is history repeating itself at the villa?
The story is told in two timelines, 1974 and the present. I did need to go back and listen to some parts twice to be sure I was keeping all the characters straight, but I think it would not be a problem when reading the book.. I think the breadcrumbs that the author leaves tips her hand on the plot a little too soon, but that does not diminish the suspense or the story.. There is a great twist at the end which readers will enjoy.
I look forward to the next Rachel Hawkins novel!

My thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC of this book.