I read The Mentor in one sitting. And you know how many thrillers I read in a year, right? 🙂 Welcome to my stop for a review on this blog tour organized by Black Thorn Tours for The Mentor (author interview coming tomorrow)! When William approaches his student, Kyle, to read (and hopefully publish) his magnum opus, a decade in the works, Kyle is more than thrilled to be reading his mentor’s work. But maybe its the horrible writing style or the main character in the manuscript wanting to eat a girl’s heart that Kyle is aptly freaked out. When William gets obsessed with Kyle and wants revenge for turning down his life’s work, things only get bad to worse and who knows is the story playing out in real life?
Curious? Check out the synopsis first!
Kyle Broder has achieved his lifelong dream and is an editor at a major publishing house.
When Kyle is contacted by his favorite college professor, William Lansing, Kyle couldn’t be happier. Kyle has his mentor over for dinner to catch up and introduce him to his girlfriend, Jamie, and the three have a great time. When William mentions that he’s been writing a novel, Kyle is overjoyed. He would love to read the opus his mentor has toiled over.
Until the novel turns out to be not only horribly written, but the most depraved story Kyle has read.
After Kyle politely rejects the novel, William becomes obsessed, causing trouble between Kyle and Jamie, threatening Kyle’s career, and even his life. As Kyle delves into more of this psychopath’s work, it begins to resemble a cold case from his college town, when a girl went missing. William’s work is looking increasingly like a true crime confession.
Lee Matthew Goldberg’s The Mentor is a twisty, nail-biting thriller that explores how the love of words can lead to a deadly obsession with the fate of all those connected and hanging in the balance.
Content Notes: Cannibalism, Alcoholism, Drug use, Loss of an animal. Potentially gory at times.
Why I chose to read The Mentor
I don’t read thrillers often but this one caught my eye because it has a manuscript at its heart and an editor as one of the main characters. I also love the dichotomy offered by the title of the novel and the storyline the synopsis glimpses at – who is a mentor? And how obligated is one to make someone they used to know, someone they looked up to, happy?
Themes for Thought
Kyle is super excited when he learns that his favorite professor, a father figure, William, has finally come to the point in his novel that he is willing to share it with the world. Devil’s Hopyard has been in the works for a decade now and still isn’t a complete manuscript, but seeing Kyle’s recent success in the publishing industry, William wants him to be the editor for his novel which will surely take the world by storm.
However, this masterpiece turns out to be a masterpiece for all the wrong reasons! Kyle cannot make it through even a few pages because the writing isn’t appealing to him at all. What’s worse is that the main character in the manuscript seems to obsessed with eating someone’s heart. Yes… there is a bit of cannibalism in the manuscript and that’s why Kyle thinks it is a depraved story… a madman’s take on the world! If that makes you uncomfortable, that’s exactly the point that Lee is trying to drive home here.
On Good Writing
My understanding from this book is that editors read a manuscript and decide if they want to work on it with the author to make it publishable. For this to happen, they not only have to see promise in the plot itself but also enjoy the writing style. The reason William thought his novel was going to be the next big thing was because he was doing something that is frowned upon and that element of awkwardness and bizarreness of the situation.
It is the hype that surrounds controversial issues that often leads authors to have a book deal – people love reading about the crazy stuff that others have done that they would never do themselves.
But is any of that an excuse for bad writing? Does controversy override writing style, especially in the profession of the written word?
So that means if William’s book had amazing prose, you’d be fine with it [cannibalism]?
The Mentor
Lee offers an amazing commentary on what sells and what good writing really is. Thought William’s book starts off as being exceptionally creepy, as Kyle continues to read and his encounters with his mentor start to affect his life, the lines between reality and fiction start to blur. Does fiction come from reality or does reality come from fiction?
It is so easy to get tangled in this web and through Kyle’s struggles, the incidents that took place in his past and William’s interpretation of them in his manuscript, as the reader, I started to wonder what was the truth! Did Kyle have anything to do with the missing girl mentioned in the synopsis? I started to doubt Kyle. Just like he did not want to read the rest of the story but could not stop, I was in a similar spot. But here’s the million dollar question – Should William’s manuscript see the support of a major publication house? Why?! Or why not?!
Think about how many such works you have picked up or been curious to read in the last couple years, especially with social media being a huge influence through advertising. Can you name one book that is on your list that was controvertial in nature and might not have been published traditionally otherwise?
On Obsessions
At its very core, The Mentor is a story about obsessions. How many times do we fixate on certain situations in our lives? On feedback from a supervisor or a comment that a colleague or friend made about us? Or an incident on the bus stop? What makes us stop ruminating? What if we never stop ruminating?
William wants to show Kyle that the story he thinks is unworthy of publication is actually the next big thing. It will be taught in graduate level courses and people will study it like the books that he himself teaches as an literature professor. And to get Kyle to see this, William is ready to go to any length.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book. This was such a riveting story about publishing, offering a glimpse into that side of the book business which I have always been curious about, while at the same time offering a commentary on the life projects that matter to us deeply and how obsessed people can get on facing rejection.
** The Mentor is available in stores so get a copy and let me know what you think! **
Amazon Print
Amazon Kindle
Be sure to check out what other bloggers are saying about this book, and come back tomorrow to read my Q&A with Lee!
Cover image: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash
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