It took me quite awhile to read this e-book. It started off very slowly, because the protagonist, Jacob “Finch” Bonner, is a middle-aged man, dissatisfied with his life, and going nowhere. You can almost feel the despair that he feels. He drives an old car, he teaches a writers course instead of actually writing the novel he wants to write, has no friends, girlfriend or wife or decent place to live.

That all changes when he meets a young, arrogant student in his class, who tells him about a plot that will “change the world”. It does change the world, but not in the way that either of them think. There are twists and red herrings in this book, which I easily figured out. It’s actually a book inside a book, with the writer telling the real life story of Jacob Bonner, and Jacob Bonner relating his novel within the book. The writing was good, I was interested in finding out how both stories end, but there were a few too many parentheses, and asides for my liking. The plot itself is not really “life changing” or as different as the writer, or Jacob Bonner believes. One of the things I felt was most annoying about Jacob is that he was miserable as a “failure” (he has 1, actually 2 books published, but in small distribution), and equally miserable as a success. He needed to own it, and by the time he starts to, it’s too late.

I can’t say I really liked this book, sadly. I really wanted to, but it was too convoluted, and I hated the ending. I won’t give anything away about it, but you may also figure out the “who done it” of this book long before it ends and will also be disappointed. I also prefer happy endings and like characters to get their just desserts. It didn’t make any sense to me whatsoever that it didn’t happen in this book.

Review of a Netgalley book, given to me free of charge, with no expectation of a good review. Thanks as always to Netgalley and to the author.

Wow. Just wow. And I’ve had a string of not so wow books, so The Plot was very welcome. Jacob Finch Bonner is not a highly likeable character. And that doesn’t both me too much. But he really acts as if the world owes him something. He’s in somewhat of a sophomore slump so when he meets Evan Parker who is sure he is going to write a bestseller. He’s annoyed. And he has every right to be. Especially since he thinks Evan is right.

And when Jacob decides he’s going to write the book instead, the story really gets moving. And it seems like he’s gotten away with it for a while, until he hasn’t. And it’s clear he’s being blackmailed or worse?

The Plot brings up some really good questions. So many storylines are recycled. To me, I’m not sure that it was plagarism. But perhaps something is owed since it was a such a great idea? To prevent people from stealing their ideas, they get a trademark. And this idea clearly wasn’t. And the words were Jacob’s own….so?

Still, right or wrong, The Plot is a fantastic novel. It has intrigue, suspense, it’s compulsively readable and of course, it has some twists. Pick this one up, you won’t be disappointed. I’m also betting this one will be a movie or limited series at some point. It’s just that good.

Special thanks to Netgalley and Celadon books for an e-galley in exchange for my honest review.

I’ve heard nothing but praise for this one and I was really excited to read it but it was soooooo boring. I didn’t like the main character or the writing at all.

Who really owns a story? Is it the person who tells it? Is it the person who writes it? Or maybe it belongs to the person who lived it.

While teaching an uninspiring class for aspiring writers, Jacob Finch Bonner is told a masterful story by one of his students who never writes the book. And so the plot of The Plot begins. Instead of going back and forth between timelines or people, as most fiction does, this story goes back and forth between current day and the novel in question.

I was riveted. While there are other books with similiar themes already published, The Plot kept me up at night turning pages.

I enjoyed reading this one. This was a unique take on the book-within-a-book concept. My only complaints have to do with the political comments that are peppered throughout the book. Please leave that stuff out. It alienates half of your readers.

A book within a book, a mystery within a mystery. The Plot lives up to the hype. It's a bit of a low start. I really had to push myself to get to the point where the action started picking up. Slog through the first 50 pages and then it really takes off. I saw the "punchline" of the book coming, but didn't know how the author was going to get there. A good summer library read.

Wow! This was a really good book. A really good book.

Jacob Finch Bonner is an author who has at least one published book that was well received but since that book he has been struggling to re-create that success. He ends up teaching a third-rate MFA program where he encounters a particular student, Evan. Evan insists he is writing the "next great novel" but will not divulge much of the plot of his novel but Jake is intrigued. Evan proves to be a reclusive, difficult type of student. while in Jake's class.

A few years later, Jake publishes his next book, Crib. This book is about a woman who kills her daughter and then takes on her life. After a while, Nobody can believe that this story is made up but Jake knows the truth. Then he receives a notification from someone calling him a thief and that person launches into a social media blitz, even involving Jake's publisher.

While on tour, Jake meets Anna who works as a producer for a radio station and gets Jake on her show. There is an attraction between the two and they start dating and eventually get married. All this time, Jake is keeping his secret from her but she confronts him. Jake has started looking into Evan's family's history after he started receiving the threats but has lots of questions.

The ending was wow! I had figured it out before the book actually ended but needed to find out how it all tied together.

The Plot has many great reviews already, but unfortunately it was not the right book for me. I found it too wordy, and I did not care for the author's frequent use of lengthy narrative set in parentheses. For the first half of the book, there was nothing in the story that grabbed or held my attention.

Things picked up at the 60% mark, so the last 40% of the book was better, but not unpredictable. Some readers will find the ending to be a surprise. I wasn't surprised by it, and really it just left me feeling sad.

I hope this book finds its way to the right readers. Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I'd heard some amazing reviews about this so I couldn't wait to get my hands on this book.

I started reading it but had to put it aside as it started off a little slow and I wasn't in the right mental space. I wondered if it was the right book for me.
After a couple of days, I picked it up again and OH MY GOSH! I am so so glad that I did. What a great book.
I absolutely loved it. I couldn't stop turning the pages.
The story sucked in completely and more than that the book within the book had me gasping aloud and burning the midnight oil with bated anticipation.

I did guess the twist a little early on but in no way did that stop me from loving the story.
The plotting, the characters and the premise is brilliantly conceived. I can't wait to read more from the author.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for sending a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The plot in question is a sensational mother/daughter drama sure to top the bestseller’s list. The would-be author is a writing seminar student, who reveals his winning plot to his writing instructor, struggling author, Jake. When the book doesn’t materialize after a few years and Jake realizes it never will, he writes and publishes it himself. As predicted, the explosive novel, Crib, is a juggernaut and Jake achieves the level of success he’s always dreamed about.
What he didn’t count on, however, is an online troll calling him out on stealing the incredible story idea and threatening to expose him as a fraud.
This might not sound terribly exciting when compared to other “thrillers” but I really enjoyed this. Excerpts of Jake’s novel are imbedded in the story, and they’re so good. I would love to see Crib written in full and released!
Thanks to #netgalley and #celadonbooks for this ARC of #theplotbook in exchange for an honest review.

This ultimately unput-downable literary, psychological thriller gets off to sluggish start, slowly setting the scene for the intense twists and turns to come. Jacob Finch Bonner, “Jake,” once a celebrated young novelist for his first book, has run out of ideas for novels. All his subsequent efforts have proven lackluster, and he slowly falls down the writer pyramid from being heralded as a rising new talent in the NY Times to teaching writer at a third-rate writers’ program. He approaches his students with the cynicism forged from his career descent, trying to encourage them on in an effort he finds capricious based on getting struck by the right inspiration coupled with writing mastery. Jacob believes that all novels boil down to a few narrative arcs, and there’s just nothing new under the sun when it comes to plots.

Until along comes Evan Parker, a student at the program who arrogantly announces that he has such an original, compelling plot that anyone could turn it into a mega best-seller. Evan’s says he’s keeping this a highly protected secret. Jake, sneeringly dismissive and not overly impressed with a story Evan shares featuring a mother and daughter in a boil of hostility. But Jake suddenly turns transfixed and convinced as Evan shares the larger plot, which we as readers do not become privy to.

Dreary years pass, with Jake’s career demise continuing until he dejectedly finds himself a caretaker of a remote rural New York hotel getaway for aspiring writers. At this point, Jake has stopped his writing altogether. When one cantankerous guest reminds him of the sheer arrogance of Evan Parker, Jacob finds himself Googling to figure out why the best-seller never materialized and learns of Evan’s death shortly after they met. Jacob convinces himself about the nobility of writing a story that must be told, especially if much of literature involves stealing ideas from elsewhere and plots that that keep getting recycled. So Jake “cribs” the plot of Evan Parker’s story Crib, and writes the inevitable best-seller.

The predicted best-seller and rise to the heights of fame ensues for Jake. But amidst of his return to glory, Jake constantly angsts about potential exposure by someone in the know of Evan Parker of having stolen the plot. After the book has been published and well-publicized, Jake finally gets an anonymous email accusing him of being a thief. At last, the pulse-throb of this tense, dramatic literary and psychological thriller kicks in. Who’s threatening to reveal Jacob as a plot thief, and what is the true back story of Evan Parker? Jacob races to unmask who’s threatening him and becomes more and more terrified as he learns Evan Parker’s backstory.

Clever twists ensue as the book races to its perfidious ending.

For more reviews and bookish posts please visit: https://www.ManOfLaBook.com

The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz follows a failed writer that found himself with a bestseller on his hands, a mysterious person, however, keeps claiming it is plagiarized. Ms. Korelitz is a published author, and founder of BookTheWriter, a New York City based service that offers “Pop-Up Book Groups.

A struggling writer, with one published book, finds himself teaching a third-rate MFA program in Vermont. One of Jacob Finch Bonner’s students, however, seem to have an innate talent for storytelling but only shares a bit of his plot.

Several years later, Jacob finds out the student died, and he expands on the few pages he gave him. Someone, however, recognizes the work and starts harassing Jacob online and through the mail.

I very much enjoy books about books, like the wonderful Cemetery of Forgotten Books series, I think many bibliophiles do as well. The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz is not just about books, but also about the publishing industry, as well as what just an accusation of plagiarism can do to a writer, professionally and mentally.

After I requested a galley of this book, I found it was one of the most anticipated books to come out. I can understand why, the synopsis peaks one’s curiosity immediately, and a huge potential can be read between the lines.

The book is very well written, takes its time building a story and narrative. Among the pages, the reader will also find excerpts from the protagonist fictional best-selling novel.

A word of warning, the book follows a man who is not very likeable, which I think might turn off some readers. Jacob Finch Bonner’s inner dialogue about others, while constantly missing internal introspection, along with the world around him, was fascinating. Add to that the musings of a writer disappointed with the turn his once promising career took a noise dive, without him even noticing.
And he feels too sorry for himself to do anything about it, furthering the downward trajectory of his career and life.

About three quarters into the novel, I thought I figured out the “twist”, and I did. While not as shocking or suspenseful, I still enjoyed reading the rest, finding out how thing will be resolved.

Frankly, I thought the storytelling was very well done, and the narrative very readable. I enjoyed the story within a story plot. One could even make an argument that the narrative is a story within a story, with another related story being told unbeknownst to the reader.

It takes an enormous amount of guts, and audacity for Ms. Korelitz to write about a best-selling novel, while including parts of that novel, in her novel (got that?). Whether one likes it or not (I did), the chutzpah to create this sort of structure deserves admiration.

Incredible! I read a ton of books and this one was something different! Loved it.

Loved the book within the book, the references to the literary and publishing world, the character developments, and the twists within the twists! I will be recommending The Plot all summer. So glad I had the chance to read it early!

Here is my favorite quote from this book - “I’ve learned so much about writers. You’re a strange kind of beast, aren’t you, with your petty feuds and your fifty shades of narcissism? You act like words don’t belong to everyone. You act like stories don’t have real people attached to them. It’s hurtful, Jake.”

There were so many quotes -- I had so many pages highlighted. This is the first book I've read of hers and this one makes me want to do a deep dive into her others. Jacob and Evan were written brilliantly and if you love a great ending -- this one is for you!!

Before you pick this up, be ready for a slow burn. There is a lot of development. I was so pumped when it started to pick up (about halfway through) but I did find it to be predictable. Even with having it figured out, I found it interesting and entertaining to watch it all unfold!

I struggled with Jake. He is just so... blah. I love to hate unlikeable characters, but he is so bland. I had a hard time believing he actually had the imagination it takes to write a best selling novel. Without giving away too much information, I think hating him is why I LOVED seeing this story play out!

This would be a great read for a book club. There are several aspects to this story that would bring great discussion points.

Thank you @netgalley and @celadonbooks for this copy!

I would like to say thank you to #NetGalley, #CeladonBooks, and author #JeanHanffKorelitz for the ARC of #ThePlot.

First of all I want to start with a couple of things that were off putting. The book, especially the first half, was extremely wordy. I don’t enjoy a book as much when it has words that I have to look up on almost every page. I felt a lot of what was said could have been condensed and put into easier wording.. With that being said in the end I did enjoy the second half quiet a bit more than the first.

Jacob Finch Bonner is an author, or at least one with some minor success. Thank goodness that book he published a while back had allowed him to become a teacher of creative writing at a symposium for aspiring writers. At least it kept the bills paid.

While in one of these teaching sessions he comes across a man who is incredibly off-putting and acts superior to everyone there, including Jacob. In a one on one session with Jacob he tells him he has a absolute sure fire plot that even a terrible writer would have huge success with. We're talking successes such as Oprah recommending it for her book club and a movie being made. Eventually Evan, the student, tells Jacob a little about the plot. Jacob is shaken to his core, when he realizes this self important turd may be right.

For awhile Jacob watches and waits for the this highly successful book, but it never comes. After about three years he decides to Google his previous student and learns that he met an early demise.

What should he do? After all, Jacob has a responsibility as a writer to make sure the story is told, right? What could go wrong? He's pretty sure Evan never shared this story with anyone else but him. Even then Jacob only saw a few pages..

This is a good read if you can get passed all the words in the beginning of the book. Check it out when you can as it will be available from your favorite retailer on 5/11/21.

As always the opinions above are mine and mine alone. #HappyReading!

Many of the reviews I've read about this book got me excited....but I was disappointed upon actually reading it. My first and biggest complaint is about the writing! Huge blocks of text with no dialog or paragraph breaks made it tedious and boring to read. Really, I was reading this on a 10 inch Samsung tablet and very often my whole screen would be full of text with no breaks at all. I had to force myself to go back to reading each time I quit. Finally, I pushed through because a library hold I had came through and I needed to finish this one. My second biggest complaint was that I guessed the twist before I was supposed to. I didn't find any part of this book shocking or surprising and was frankly, quite bored.

GONE GIRL Meets LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE In Jean Hanff Korelitz's THE PLOT.

While I always enjoying reading, I find myself hard-pressed to find books that are chilling, deceptive, imaginative, fantastic, and memorable - all at once. 

But when I came across this book, which Stephen King called, "Insanely readable" and "one of the best novels [he has] ever read about writers and writing," I knew I had to give Jean Hanff Korelitz' The Plot a read. Now, I can completely understand why it earned King's praise. 

I graduated with my MFA in Poetry back in 2015, and all of the feelings I have carried with me from that program are reflected in the early pages of The Plot: self-doubt, dare I say Imposter Syndrome, competitiveness, and even envy against writers who are further along in their journey, wondering if my work will ever be noticed or rise to the top… When Korelitz opened her story with such a relatable writer, at a low-residency writer's program, feeling these writerly feelings, I knew I was in for it. 

What I didn't expect was what the plot of the story would be, why the front cover featured a ground-up view of a graveyard plot, or why I would later compare this story to Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl, Ruth Ware's In a Dark, Dark Wood, Celeste Ng's Little Fires Everywhere, and even Stephen King's Lisey's Story and by equal turns Secret Window, Secret Garden. 

The story follows emerging novelist, Jacob Finch Bonner, who produced one bestselling novel that left him on the "authors to look out for" list… but when he failed to produce a shining follow-up novel to stay on that high road of success, Bonner quickly found himself sliding off into the inspirationless background where he found himself teaching budding writers at a low-residency writing program and envying his writing comrades who found success. 

That was until Evan Parker walked into his class, ironically unwilling to learn anything from the workshop he was paying to attend. Parker refused to share more than a few pages of his work with Bonner, claiming he had come up with a plot that was a "sure thing": a bestseller, a worldwide read, with a guaranteed movie deal, all the achievements a novelist could hope for.

Bonner was ready to dismiss Parker's "sure thing"… until he heard the plot.

It was undeniable that Parker was right about the plot he had developed, and Bonner knew to expect it on bestselling shelves as soon as it was published. But several year passed, and there had been no book. After a little searching, Bonner discovered his student had died just months after the writer's program ended, his unbelievable story left unfinished. 

Bonner decided to do the only reasonable thing he could think of: to tell the story that deserved to be told. And the book was as successful as anyone could have hoped for. But at the height of his career, Bonner began receiving anonymous messages, claiming he had stolen and told a story that was not his to tell. After months of research, Bonner found himself deep down a rabbit hole of secrets and violence with a person who never wanted to be found. 

The Plot is at once a suspense-thriller uniquely set in the literary world of writing, self-doubt, and publication. There's doubt and deception, violence, and unreliable narrators galore. Not to mention the metafictional element of a bestselling plot, one that a reader could never see coming… contained inside Korelitz' novel, which will surely be a bestseller and which has an ending that I did not fully anticipate. 

Also, without giving too much away, this book performs deftly with one of my favorite literary devices: homonyms, or multiple-meaning words. The word "plot" is at once the subject of Korelitz' novel, the haunted factor of the book Bonner writes, the story that was stolen from someone else, and multiple… locations… throughout the novel. It's truly a spell-binding journey for what many take to be such a simple word. 

I'm quick to compare this book to Gone Girl with its slow-burning sensation and spectacular writing of an antagonist. But both books also fantastically, hauntingly question what is real, what is dangerous, and what to do when someone uncovers what you have done… The difference, really, is in the ending. For those who have read Gone Girl, they may recall how the protagonist ultimately "rethinks" their stance on a certain subject, and there is this horrible moment of "reunification." I half-expected a turn like this in the final pages of The Plot and was surprised, chilled, and enraged to discover an even darker, if admittedly far more fitting, ending. 

This book equally called Little Fires Everywhere back to me throughout my reading and untangling of The Plot, largely for its deliverance of female characters, their motivations, and their complexities that were so often dismissed in fiction less than a handful of years ago. But there's also this unique erasure effect in Little Fires Everywhere of women moving from place to place, hiding themselves, taking up new identities, covering up the things they have done - there's a resonance, here, even if from two very different corners of literary fiction. 

If it isn't clear yet, this book was an incredible read, unique, and impressive in its undertaking. It's at once eerie and startling, while also morbidly human and questionable, and it's always ready to turn the reader on their head again. Whether or not you're interested in the literary scene does not matter; if you like a unique tale, this is definitely the next book to pick up.

"Good writers borrow, great writers steal - T.S. Elliot (but possibly stolen from Oscar Wilde)"

I'd seen a lot of great reviews hyping up The Plot, and they were not wrong! Jean Hanff Korelitz, the author behind the story for HBO's Undoing (so good, I binged that in one weekend), is back with her latest release, The Plot, from Celadon Books.

Jacob Finch Bonner was once a young breakout author, but his follow-up novels were disappointing, and he's out of ideas. Stuck teaching writing to eager students in a struggling MFA program, he meets Evan Parker, a cocky student who wants no feedback from anyone. Evan knows he has a million-dollar plot and that it's his golden ticket.

Fast forward a few years later, and Jake finds out that Evan has passed away and never completed his novel. Jake can't let a plot like that go to waste, so he writes the story as his own. After a whirlwind of success, he starts to receive cryptic messages; someone knows he stole THE PLOT…

I thought this story was brilliant, a story within a story, a plot within a plot! While I didn't find any of the main characters "likable," I was still so invested. Both storylines were equally fascinating, and I could not stop reading and listening to this one! Thank you to Celadon Books and Macmillan Audio for the review copies!

"And that's where the dividing line is...between something any of us might do under the circumstances and something only a truly evil person would do."

Psychological and domestic suspense about a writer who publishes a book based on an idea that he just might have stolen/borrowed from another would-be author. Who owns the idea for a story? If there are only a limited number of basic plots in the literary world, how much of anything is really ever totally original? Depends on the story. Jacob (Jake) Finch Bonner is about to find out how far someone is willing to go to protect the plot when he receives the first email: "You are a thief." NO SPOILERS.

This was a bit of a slow starter for me and didn't really capture my interest until well after the halfway point. Since I had pretty much figured out the big "twist" early on, the rest of the narrative was just confirmation. The writing was good, but I never really felt that Jacob was much of a protagonist and he was far too reserved and timid in his reactions to what was happening. I didn't really relate to any of the secondary characters either. The focus of the novel seemed to be more about writers and feelings about being an author despite a part of it actually being the excerpts from Jake's bestselling book. It does take a long time to get to "the plot" and thus it is less compelling than it could be. Even though this is touted as being suspenseful, I never really felt the tension until the last dramatic scenes when I was actually surprised by the ending. Because of its overall tone and homage to authors and the craft of writing in a way, I am thinking that group will be the main fans and target audience.

I previously read YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN by this author and rated it 5 stars, so it may just have been that I was less interested in this premise than I was for that book. Thank you to NetGalley and Celadon Books for the e-book ARC to read and review.