THE VILLA BY RACHEL HAWKINS

2023 is off to a good start! The Villa by Rachel Hawkins is an excellent novel filled with mystery, intrigue, and an old murder set at an Italian Villa! I highly recommend it. 

Rating: ★★★★★
​Release Date: January 3, 2023
Genre: Mystery and Thriller
Series: None. 
Pages: 283 pages
Format: eBook Source: ​Publisher

From New York Times bestselling author Rachel Hawkins comes a deliciously wicked gothic suspense, set at an Italian villa with a dark history, for fans of Lucy Foley and Ruth Ware.

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.

Villa Aestas in Orvieto is a high-end holiday home now, but in 1974, it was known as Villa Rosato, and rented for the summer by a notorious rock star, Noel Gordon. In an attempt to reignite his creative spark, Noel invites up-and-coming musician, Pierce Sheldon to join him, as well as Pierce’s girlfriend, Mari, and her stepsister, Lara. But he also sets in motion a chain of events that leads to Mari writing one of the greatest horror novels of all time, Lara composing a platinum album––and ends in Pierce’s brutal murder.

As Emily digs into the villa’s complicated history, she begins to think there might be more to the story of that fateful summer in 1974. That perhaps Pierce’s murder wasn’t just a tale of sex, drugs, and rock & roll gone wrong, but that something more sinister might have occurred––and that there might be clues hidden in the now-iconic works that Mari and Lara left behind.

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.

Inspired by Fleetwood Mac, the Manson murders, and the infamous summer Percy and Mary Shelley spent with Lord Byron at a Lake Geneva castle––the birthplace of Frankenstein––The Villa welcomes you into its deadly legacy.

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READ MY BOOK REVIEW

The Villa is the third bingeable and highly addicting thriller from Rachel Hawkins! This book was perfect to me. Well, pretty much perfect. I feel like the ending was a little bit rushed and could have had a little more added to it to make it feel more stunning and cohesive, but I appreciate the entire novel as a whole and can’t even deduct star points for it because I loved it so much. Told in dual timelines with a murder that seamlessly weaves together the past and the present, this book was very hard to put down. I was thinking about it when I had to and immediately picked it back up when I was able to. If you enjoyed books like Verity and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo but with a shocking murder and twisted ending, then this is a must read for you! It’s perfect for a winter read if you want to warm up after a cold day as it takes place during the summer in an Italian Villa! I highly recommend it!

𝗣𝗘𝗥𝗙𝗘𝗖𝗧 𝗙𝗢𝗥 𝗙𝗔𝗡𝗦 𝗢𝗙:
• Dual Timelines (70’s and the present)
• Shocking Twists
• Thrillers and Mysteries

𝗠𝗬 𝗥𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗡𝗚: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐