Score: 4/5 Bookmarks

Ooh this is a dark, twisty story! Thank you to Celadon and Macmillan Audio for gifting me review copies of The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz.

Jacob Finch Bonner is a novelist, struggling to make ends-meat and find the right story idea for his next novel when one of his students at the MFA program tells him his plot idea. And what a plot it is. His student boasts that he doesn’t even need to be a good writer to turn an idea like that into an amazing success. Jacob is jealous of the other man’s idea and confidence, but he soon forgets all about it until a couple of years later. He then looks up the student to see if he ever did write that novel, and finds nothing…

I don’t want to give too much away because the joy of reading this novel is being fed each puzzle piece and seeing how it all fits together. I was gripped from the beginning, and while I did work out the ending by about halfway through it didn’t diminish my enjoyment of the rest of the story. It’s dark, and delightfully disturbing with characters you’ll love to loathe. Plus, I loved that Seattle is featured (including one of my favorite bookstores, Elliot Bay Books) a couple of times throughout the story.

The audiobook was well-paced and it felt like I flew through the 10 hours and 43 minutes in no time. You might also recognize Kirby Heyborne’s narration from The Wife Upstairs or Hour of the Witch. You can grab a copy of The Plot on audiobook via the button below, or get a physical copy here.

Synopsis:

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.

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?