A review by samizimecki
The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai

3.0

My only real exposure to the AIDS crisis was through [b:The Heart's Invisible Furies|33253215|The Heart's Invisible Furies|John Boyne|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1490803456l/33253215._SY75_.jpg|51438471] and I felt like that book did a better job than this one. We follow Yale and his group of friends in the 1980's as they tragically try to find a cure or at least figure out how to manage the epidemic going through their community. This storyline was fine, but honestly there were a lot of characters and I didn't really connect to any of them, even Yale, who was the main one. Then we have the alternating one based in present day where the sister of one of the characters in the other story is in France trying to find her daughter that joined a cult. While I understand that Makkai was trying to merge the two stories, I really felt that the cult story line and random hookups were not needed and I was thankful that these chapters were so much shorter.

To me, this story dragged a bit, and the characters weren't anything special. Minus the fact that this book shed light to a chapter of history that doesn't get a lot of exposure, I really think it falls more into the overhyped category. I'll round up to 3 stars because the writing was good, but when it takes 400pages to finally connect to the main character, I don't think it's worth recommending.