Reviews

After Sal experiences an epic career failure and the demise of her relationship with her boyfriend in The Mythmakers by Keziah Weir, she embarks on a quest to find out why she's the alleged focus of an unpublished book by a famous author. Unfortunately, the author passed away, so she's not sure if she will ever find out the reason why she becomes a character in his book after she meets him at a book party. She gives up everything to contact his wife in upstate New York and see if she can get ahold of this manuscript and piece together this mystery, possibly as a pitched magazine story.

I added this book to my TBR list because I've been reading this author's pieces in Vanity Fair, Elle, and other magazines for several years. I wanted to see how her writing translated into an entire novel. The writing is amazing without being pretentious, and I definitely want to see what's next. But the book did not wow me.

The book has an amazing premise, but I didn't feel the emphasis on it or even get the fruition of it. You start out learning about Sal's mistakes in her career and somewhat about her relationship, but the focus shifts to the wife of the author and her life. As another reviewer said, this presents more character studies than plot. That would be okay, but some of the characters didn't feel that interesting or intriguing. Frankly, Sal's meeting with Sawyer, a person she meets at the local coffee shop, was more entertaining, and I would have liked exploring that character more.

Although there is a twist in this book, I did not see it, and even when it was revealed, I almost missed it and didn't care that much. You're plodding toward it through several chapters and not even realizing it's coming. This could be a good thing if executed well, but this book really isn't centered on the mystery after a while. It's almost like the book is two separate books without a strong tie between them. You almost forget that there's a mystery to be solved with the character histories the author presents.

I cannot say that I didn't like the book, but it's rather slow and, at times, lackluster. I felt it should have been more plot-driven and focused on the mystery or it could have gone with the character-study aspect instead of bringing up the mystery at all. And, sometimes, I could not grasp why the main character acted as she did. There wasn't enough information to justify some of her actions in my opinion.

Thank you, Scribner, S&S, Marysue Rucci Books, for an advanced reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

arayo's review

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Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

Content Warnings

hrstarzec's review

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4.0

At a certain point I've grown tired of books that have interconnecting narratives just for the sake of it, that lean on the perceived cleverness or skill required to just tell us more and more and more. I've even read some that strained themselves by even adding a second narrative, because inevitably there's one that's far more compelling than the other. I didn't expect The Mythmakers to be this type of novel, though I guess I should have (I was sold on it by the title and cover, and only read the first line of the synopsis). This novel manages to do it much better than most, I am happy to report, even if it often resigns itself to being a scattered storm of a thing. I was interested in each life being depicted, and I never felt like I was trudging through a meaningless secondary narrative just to get back to the interesting stuff.

I'm not a huge fan of the melodrama it veers into at several points -- deaths, near-deaths, betrayals, revelations! -- but I am a huge fan of the many moments in-between, and I admire the greater questions it prods at, even if I think it could have done more to highlight them. I am yet unsure whether it lived up to the wildest expectations I may have had from the basic premise, but it was nevertheless a riveting read.