If We Were Villains
by M. L. Rio (Flatiron, 2017)
audiobook read by Robert Petkoff (Macmillan Audio, 2017)
The Shakespeare-saturated acting school setting and tragedian fourth-years offer real dramatic scope—all, alas, save the recycled cardboard first-person narrator (who pales before even the walk-on characters). Act Two ends with a would-be-galvanising death, whereafter follow three acts of unaccountably torpid stagnation.