“Three writers, two marriages, one affair, infinite sides to the story.”

“A beguiling novel of artists and muses, husbands and wives, and the timeless question of who owns a story.”

“A seductive nesting doll of a book that grapples with perspective and memory, as well as the battles between creative ambition and love”.

I mean… I guess?? These blurbs describe the book I thought I was going to get, but I don’t know… I just didn’t get it. I kept waiting for more to happen, and it was such a slow burn. It didn’t feel realistic that Sal would upend her life, and she wasn’t a sympathetic character I could ever get behind. I wanted to love it, and kept hoping more would happen. Goodreads reviews seem to be either 2 star or 5 star, so evidently this book is speaking to some readers, but unfortunately it didn’t for me.

🤍Thank you @penguinrandomca and Netgalley for an advanced copy in exchange for my honest review. This published last Tuesday. I’d love to hear more thoughts from others who have read it!

Named a most anticipated book of the year by Harper’s Bazaar, ELLE, and Literary Hub, Keziah Weir’s debut The Mythmakers is a compulsively readable, twisted, and satisfying tale following a struggling journalist on the hunt for her next piece.

After losing her job at a magazine for publishing a profile on a playwright who deceived her, writer Sal Cannon comes across a short story by Martin Keller, an older man she met at a literary event six years prior. In The Paris Review, it’s an excerpt from his unpublished novel, and it’s about the evening they met. She’s desperate to read the rest.

Only when she makes it to the end does she realize it’s an old issue and Martin Keller is now dead.

With no job and her relationship crumbling, she considers this man in her past, and if he was writing about her, that would make one heck of a story, so it's a lead worth chasing. Sal must find a way to get her hands on the rest of the novel.

She hops on a bus from Manhattan to Linden to seek out Martin Keller’s widow with only one goal in mind, expertly slipping out of one life and into another, eager to uncover the mystery behind the manuscript. But upon meeting Martin’s widow, Moira, everything changes.

Was the man she met that night who she thought he was?

This was an enjoyable read with lots to contemplate and very well-drawn characters. I often found myself annoyed by the main character, Sal, but that probably says more about where I am right now than about the likeability of the character!

I loved that the novelist's daughter was a musician, and how that experience and relationship added to the themes of the novel. I'll recommend it to anyone interested in the lives of writers (of fiction and non-fiction) and those who love them - and bigger questions of storytelling, creative expression, and how to be active authors of our own lives.