Book Review: The Plot | Jean Hanff Korelitz

The Plot

📖 BOOK REVIEW⠀📚 The Plot

AUTHOR: Jean Hanff Korelitz @jeanhanff

Publisher: Celadon Books @celadonbooks

Stars: ⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2 + 🐰 

Published: May 11, 2021

https://amzn.to/3iJkV8Y

The Review 📚 The Plot

The Title/Cover Draw:

  • I heard @gabbyreads talking about this book and I really like the premise. I got it from my library as an audiobook, which I really do recommend!

💜 What I liked:

  • The story reads like a masterful detective novel, but with the author being the detective. It’s a story within a story with parts of the book enclosed vs the real life part. The twist at the end creeps up on you, in a way that I totally didn’t see coming. The narrators were concise and clear, which made the book even more enjoyable.

😱 What I didn’t like:

  • While the ending had that crazy twist, it didn’t totally end as strong as I would have liked.

🚦 My face at the end: 😳

💭 5 Reasons to Read:

  • 1. Strong story within a story
  • 2. Crazy end twist
  • 3. Easy to listen to audiobook
  • 4. Rich location descriptions
  • 5. Complex characters

🕧 Mini-Summary:

  • Jacob hears an amazing story idea from his student, Evan. After learning of his death, Jacob decides it won’t hurt anyone if he writes the book, because really, who will know?

All thoughts and opinions are my own. 

📘 Summary 📚 The Plot

Jacob Finch Bonner was once a promising young novelist with a respectably published first book. Today, he’s teaching in a third-rate MFA program and struggling to maintain what’s left of his self-respect; he hasn’t written–let alone published–anything decent in years. When Evan Parker, his most arrogant student, announces he doesn’t need Jake’s help because the plot of his book in progress is a sure thing, Jake is prepared to dismiss the boast as typical amateur narcissism. But then… he hears the plot.

Jake returns to the downward trajectory of his own career and braces himself for the supernova publication of Evan Parker’s first novel: but it never comes. When he discovers that his former student has died, presumably without ever completing his book, Jake does what any self-respecting writer would do with a story like that–a story that absolutely needs to be told.

In a few short years, all of Evan Parker’s predictions have come true, but Jake is the author enjoying the wave. He is wealthy, famous, praised and read all over the world. But at the height of his glorious new life, an e-mail arrives, the first salvo in a terrifying, anonymous campaign: You are a thief, it says.

As Jake struggles to understand his antagonist and hide the truth from his readers and his publishers, he begins to learn more about his late student, and what he discovers both amazes and terrifies him. Who was Evan Parker, and how did he get the idea for his “sure thing” of a novel? What is the real story behind the plot, and who stole it from whom?

Hailed as breathtakingly suspenseful, Jean Hanff Korelitz’s The Plot is a propulsive read about a story too good not to steal, and the writer who steals it.

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