Did you read The Villa by Rachel Hawkins and are looking for a full plot summary, a character list, an explanation of the ending of The Villa or just someone to talk to about this complicated book? Pull up a chair, make yourself a limoncello cocktail (haha) or a lemonade and let’s kick off this Spoiler Discussion for The Villa by Rachel Hawkins.
Character List for The Villa by Rachel Hawkins
Characters: 1970s
Mari Godwick: published the horror novel Lilith Rising in 1976 (based on Villa Rosato). Died in 1993.
William Godwick: Mari’s father, a famous writer
Marianne: Mari’s mother, also a writer/journalist; died in childbirth.
Pierce Sheldon: Mari’s boyfriend, a musician. Murdered at the Villa on July 29, 1974.
Frances: Pierce’s wife. Takes her own life shortly before Pierce’s death.
Billy: Pierce and Mari’s baby son, who died of a chest infection in 1973.
Jane: Mari’s stepmother
Lara (Janet): Mari’s stepsister, a musician who wrote the album Aestes with the famous song, “Golden Chain.” Died of a drug overdose.
Noel Gordon: famous musician with a band called The Rovers. Dies in a plane crash in 1981.
Lady Arabella Wentworth: Noel’s wife. Divorced Noel during Johnnie’s trial.
John “Johnnie” Dorchester: friend of Noel, convicted of Pierce’s murder. Took his own life in prison.
Characters: Present day
Emily McRae Sheridan: main character, cozy mystery writer, recently divorced.
Jessica “Chess” Chandler: Emily’s friend and a succesful self-help guru.
Matt Sheridan: Emily’s ex-husband.
Characters and Plot Summary for Lilith Rising by Mari Godwick
Victoria, who has come to a house called Somerton and falls in love with an evil priest and kills him and her family.
Plot Summary for the Villa by Rachel Hawkins
Emily and Chess meet for lunch. Emily is working through a difficult time, first suffering from a mystery illness and then splitting from her husband, Matt. She’s struggling to work on the latest installment in her cozy mystery series.
Chess invites Emily to spend six weeks in Italy, writing. But the two soon learn that their destination, Villa Aestas is a “murder house.”
In the 1970s, Lara also suggests a trip to Italy to her stepsister, Mari.
Emily finds a copy of Lilith Rising by Mari Godwick at the Villa, which used to be called Villa Rosato. She begins to read and it’s clear that Somerton, the house in the book, was inspired by the Villa.
In 1974, the group (Pierce, Noel, Lara, Mari and Johnnie) settle into the villa. Johnnie carves an M on the window for Mari.
Kali and Bex are podcasting about the Villa Rosado murders in the 1970s. Pierce was the victim, a married man who started sleeping with sixteen year old Mari in 1971, who then had his baby at seventeen.
Emily asks her agent if she can write about the murders.
Back in 1974, Mari catches Noel and Pierce kissing. She joins them and all three sleep together. Lara finds them the next day and is upset.
Newspaper article about how Noel was supposedly murdered by Johnnie who then took his own life in prison.
Two novels about the Villa Aestes murder!
Fascinated by Lilith Rising and her research on the 1974 murder, Emily starts writing a true crime memoir. Chess peeks at it and suggests they collaborate and write it together. Emily, who has been struggling with writer’s block and wants this project for herself, says.
Chess writes to her agent and says she wants to write a true crime story about Lara and Mari.
Mari is depressed because it would have been her son’s second birthday (wow, and she is only 16) and agrees to go into town with Johnnie. They go to Pozzo di San Patrizio, St Patrick’s Well, a site named after a cave in Ireland that is so deep that you can cross into the underworld.
Chess and Emily go on a picnic. Emily tells Chess that her husband Matt cheated on her. Chess is sympathetic though I would not be surprised if she was the one Matt was sleeping with!
Emily finds the first part of Mari’s hidden secret 1974 diary:
Chess tells her that Mari returned to the Villa in 1993. Emily wonders why, then finds Mari’s diary hidden in the same place where Mari’s character Victoria hid her diary: under the window seat.
Mari’s 1974 Diary Part 1:
One night, Mari wakes up to find Pierce naked and screaming in their room. He had a nightmare of her covered in blood. This inspires her writing about Victoria and she’s able to continue writing t the book.
Then Mari finds Lara, crying and playing the guitar. Lara is pregnant.
The Present
Emily is reading the diary. She wishes the pages covered Pierce’s murder but peeked ahead and they don’t.
Emily sees a bunch of missed calls from Matt. He wants her to proceed with their divorce. She drinks a limoncello cocktail prepared by Chess and immediately starts feeling the mystery illness symptoms (dizziness, nausea, vomiting) that plagued her before.
Mari’s Diary 1974 continued:
Mari tells Noel that Lara is pregnant and he’s the father. He has no intention of having anything to do with the baby, though he offers to give Lara money.
Pierce is excited about the baby which annoys Mari. He then gets a telegram saying that his wife, Frances, drowned herself Virginia Woolf style.
The Present
In the present, Emily is almost done with her new book. She searches the villa for more of Mari’s writing but finds nothing.
She then peeks at Chess’s laptop and sees that Chess wrote an unflattering description of Emily in her new self-help book. Fair but really rude…
Emily also finds another piece of writing that Chess did about Lara and her part in the Villa tragedy. Emily reads what Chess wrote about Lara’s song lyrics, and she knows where to find the rest of Mari’s diary.
WHERE?! Does the book ever tell us? I don’t think so. If you know, please tell us in comments!
More of Mari’s 1974 diary:
Mari is trying to finish her book. Johnnie comes and flirts with her but she rebuffs him. He tells her that Pierce is no good – that he cheated with Lara and basically drove his own wife to suicide. Pierce overhears and they fight. Pierce wants to leave but Mari’s writing is going well. She thinks he’s selfish.
Newspaper article:
The testimony of the Villa maid, Elena, was what got Johnnie convicted.
Back in 1974, Mari and Pierce are fighting. He says that his wife Frances’s parents are going to seek custody of his son with Frances and he wants Lara’s baby instead. Pierce points out that, actually, he could be the father of Lara’s baby. Yikes. Mari is (surprisingly) shocked.
Account One of Pierce’s Death: Mari’s Confession (from the hidden Mari papers that Emily found)
Pierce accidentally steps on Lara’s guitar. Furious, Lara pushes him and he falls and hits his head. Mari then hits Pierce with a statue until he’s dead. The two of them then find Johnnie passed out and decide to frame him for Pierce’s murder. Then Mari finishes writing her book.
Emily is shocked by the fact that Mari killed Pierce. She is tempted to tell Chess but since they are both writing books about the case, she is afraid that Chess will betray her. She finds Chess sneakily talking on the phone with a guy. (Hmmm… who could that be?)
Certain that Chess was talking to Matt, Emily confronts her and they have a physical fight. Chess admits to a one night stand with Matt but drops a bombshell: she thinks Matt was the one making Emily sick. (Was he poisoning her? No just stressing her out so much that she got sick. Okay.
What is the ending of The Villa by Rachel Hawkins?
Emily tells Chess that Matt is after her money and will get the proceeds of this new book. Then she shows Chess Mari’s diary. (Except the very last part.)
They make a plan.
At the 90% point of the book, something FINALLY happens in the present: Matt arrives at the villa.
News article: Matt drowned in the Villa pool.
Mari’s papers: 1980
Noel and Mari meet in London for dinner. Noel makes a toast to the memories of Johnnie and Pierce. Mari wonders if Noel knows she killed Pierce.
After dinner Mari impulsively calls Lara, who says she knew Mari would call one day. Mari says she loves Lara’s album. Lara expresses regret for the murder and says they should’ve just left the villa. She hangs up on Mari.
News article: reception for the publication of The Villa by Chess and Emily.
Chess and Emily are meeting for lunch. The Villa is going to be an HBO miniseries shot on location in Italy. Chess wants the two of them to write another book. Emily doesn’t want to. Chess suggests they write about other famous murders.
Emily reflects that getting rid of Matt was the only way to solve their problems. But she realizes she’s now bound to Chess forever.
Mari 1993: the final part of Mari’s papers
Mari is back at the Villa. She is terminally ill, with only a few months to live. She thinks about Noel and Pierce and Johnnie. Mari spent 20 years try not to think about the night of the murder, but lets herself remember.
Who really killed Pierce? The Ending of The Villa Explained
On the night of Pierce’s murder, Mari was writing. She heard an argument, went downstairs and saw Pierce lying on the floor. Johnnie standing over Pierce’s body with something in his hand.
For some unknown reason, Mari decides to write a different story in which she’s the one who hit Pierce. (omg shades of Verity!!)
Mari then writes an account of having dinner with Noel in 1980, an account in which she suggests that Lara feels guilty about the murder.
But Mari and Lara and didn’t kill Pierce, Johnny did. Mari takes the pages she wrote and hides them, one part under the window seat, and the other part somewhere more secret. Somewhere only a true fan would find them. (WHERE??)
Spoiler Discussion for The Villa by Rachel Hawkins
Well. We have quite a lot to discuss, and I’ll try to be organized. If you have topics to add, please leave a comment!
Do you like the Past or Present Narrative in the Villa?
In most reviews I’ve seen, readers strongly prefer one or the other. I am #Team1970s.
I LOVED the way that the 1970s narrative was a total retelling of the famous 1816 summer that Mary Shelley (author of Frankenstein, poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Polidori (thought of as the creator of vampire fiction, poet George Gordon, Lord Byron, and Mary’s stepsister Claire spent at a house in Switzerland, telling each other spooky stories that would be the basis for Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein. If you are interested, I talk a LOT about this in my Review of The Villa. It’s a CRAZY story, so check it out!!
I didn’t love the present narrative, because nothing happened until the very end. We’ll get to that. But did you prefer one narrative over the other?
Why did Mari write two different narratives of Pierce’s murder?
This feels like a Team Letter/Team Manuscript situation reminiscent of Verity by Colleen Hoover. Why do you think she did this, and do you think that she and Lara killed Pierce?
I think they did not, but I am open to a counter-argument!
What did you think of the ending of The Villa?
Why did Emily manipulate Chess into helping her kill Matt?
I don’t know. Was this really necessary? Was it to punish Matt and Chess? She wanted to kill him and wanted an accomplice? I don’t really get it.
What do you think was the point of The Villa?
The retelling aspect hasn’t been highlighted as far as I have seen.
I feel like Hawkins fell WAY into the retelling rabbit hole, maybe so much that she should have focused the book on that. I didn’t feel like the past/present storylines were that related to each other (as I found Emily and Chess SO dull).
Feminism? I don’t know. I think this book intended to be feminist, about female creativity. But Chess and Emily hardly had this aspirational sisterhood, nor did Lara and Mari. More like female rivalry?
Just a “murder house” book? Maybe. I did like the whole vibe of the spooky house.
Overall I did really enjoy this one. If your book club is arguing between Taylor Jenkins Reid and a classic, The Villa can offer both.
What did you think? What are your questions and observations? Where was the last part of the diary? What did I miss?!?!?
Check out my Spoilers Reviews of ALL Rachel Hawkins books:
Super late to the discussion, but I just finished the book and read all the comments here.
I’m wondering now if the whole book was just a narrative on how our memories are never quite as accurate as we think they are, and history is made up of people’s memories. The fact that Mari writes a completely different story than what happened and hopes someone finds it is such a crazy concept but made me wonder how much of our history is actually just people tweaking their truths to fit a certain narrative.
Chess is a great example of this too, manipulating the truth with a few wonky details. My thoughts go to the part of the book where Emily mentions the sleepover where they watch the Lilith Rising movie and Chess says she wasn’t there but then asks Emily later, “didn’t you crawl into my sleeping bag that night?”
I feel like Chess was manipulating Emily’s memories the entire time especially when she recounts the timeline of the “one time” affair with Matt. It was so confusing to me that Chess went along with the murder of Matt, just hopped right on board for that. I was also surprised at Emily forgiving Chess so quickly. That turn around was weird to me and the narrative kinda seemed to change from then on.
So this then leads me to wonder if Emily’s account of the whole story is slightly skewed just as Mari’s hidden diary was. Maybe Emily as the narrator was only allowing us to see what she wanted us to.
Maybe I’m just getting into a conspiracy thought spiral that we aren’t meant to trust any of the character’s perspectives 😂
I have to say I didn’t enjoy the back and forth narrative from past to present and back. I found the plot’s twists and turns to be gratuitous and not akin to reality. Can’t say I enjoyed the book but I am glad I finished it for the sake of finishing a book
I agree – I preferred the narrative in the past. Onto the next book 🙂