The Plot: The gripping New York Times bestselling page-turner that is perfect for fans of Lianne Moriarty and Lisa Jewell

Liked getting to the end to know I was right about who the villain was. It’s ironic this book is about struggling writers. I was quite bored by the writing, I skipped loads of pages throughout the story where there was too much description. And it goes on and on about the struggles of writers which I couldn’t care less about. There is no surprise at all when the big reveal happens, it was fairly obvious early on. And no sympathy for the main character because he spends the whole book being so self indulgent so there’s no one to bat for or to want to see get their comeuppance. Sorry but this book isn’t great, I’m just not strong enough to put a book down otherwise I really would have. But hey, I wouldn’t be able to write a novel at all so there’s a positive in that isn’t there?

This, to me, was really disappointing. I bought this novel after reading several raving reviews and I’m just sitting here now scratching my head and wondering how this book merits all the praise it has received.The final ‘reveal’ was one of the most predicable ones I have ever encountered! And the pace of this… the pace was infuriating. For example, we get introduced to Jacob and his new students at Ripley, we start connecting with the characters and story and then… boom! We’re now months into the future and, by the way, forget about those characters that were previously introduced.Then the ‘story’ within the story, the famous plot! What a bore that was. A snooze-feat.Finally, the amount of parentheses. So many parentheses! Especially at the beginning. It’s like a paragraph couldn’t end without a parenthesis.I’m giving this 1/5 even though I finished it; even though the writing was, for the most, part good. I’m giving it 1/5 because it could have actually been a great book. The author clearly is a good writer! But, if this book shows us anything, is that not even good writing can save a bad plot.

I'm not saying it was terrible (I've read worse), but overall this book was disappointing. It had potential, but in the end was just...meh. My reasons are as follows:1) Firstly, and most importantly, I was able to figure out fairly early on in the book that one of the characters wasn't who she portrayed herself to be. As the book crossed over the half way point, it just became even more obvious, SO obvious, who this character was. So there was no mystery here, no 'who dunnit'. I figured it out quite early on, which usually doesn't happen! There were no real twists or turns in this book.2) This book needed a good editing. This author is fond of writing very long sentences, that go on and on and on. I sometimes had to go back and read the sentence from the beginning again to make sense of it. The author also comma splices (putting commas where there should be full stops), but then misses commas where they are needed (after sentence openers).3) This is just personal to me. Take it or leave it. The author just couldn't help, now and then, but to insert her left-wing real life views in the book. For example, one paragraph in the book had Jake wondering if he should contact Twitter about TalentedTom's tweets. However, he changed his mind after reminding himself that Twitter was protecting a certain president (in regards to something about senators and receiving blow jobs), so they would be unlikely to help him. What?! What was the author talking about? (All I can say is that Trump Derangement Syndrome is still a real thing, lol!) And mentioning Rachel Madcow? LOL. Anyone with an IQ above a rock wouldn't take her biased 'journalism' seriously.Now, in regards to improving the actual plot of this book, I would have written the ending as follows. (Spoiler alert ahead). In the last chapter of the book, we would have discovered that Jake is alive. We, the reader, would learn in the last chapter that Jake had decided, somewhere along the way, to investigate his wife's background story, because it was so unusual and he was curious. He would have discovered inconsistencies and would have then hired a private investigator to continue the research. The research would have concluded that Anna wasn't who she said she was. Jake would have confided in his publisher (can't remember the character's name), who would come to have deep reservations and suspicions about Anna and take Jake under her protective wing.In the end, Jake would not have quite realized, that final evening, exactly who Anna was. However, after she tries to kill him and leaves, he would've been saved (just in the nick of time, of course), by his publisher. The publisher would've had concerns when she couldn't reach Jake that evening, and would've gone to his apartment. She would've known that Anna had caught a flight out to Seattle, and her spidey senses would have been tingling. She would've had her own key to Jake's apartment (as their suspicions about Anna had increased), and upon opening the door, she would've discovered Jake unconscious and gotten him medical help just in time.So the last chapter would've been this surprise revelation to the reader and would've concluded with Anna's complete shock when she was arrested.Well, I just thought of the above in a few minutes, but I honestly believe it would've been a better twist to the plot than the actual novel!

This really annoys me - I was interested to read this because of what I'd read about the book and the plot sounded interesting. What I didn't realise is that when you read what it's about, that's actually about 60% of the book so you're reading it thinking I obviously know what happens next, that's the man, I know what happens to him, I know what's next now, etc etc. I still want to know the ending but I've read a load of the book which just really fleshes out what Amazon has already told me. I understand you need to say what a book is about, but honestly this has really annoyed me. I avoid reviews for this reason (until I've read the book) but Amazon is full of too much of this.

This was an enjoyable, gripping and clever literary thriller. I liked the premise of a disillusioned writer encountering a student with a truly original idea of a plot, and later stealing it after this student has met an untimely end. Along the way, the novel offers plenty of amusing insights into the literary world (with lots of references to actual books and writers), as well as asking pertinent questions about writing, stories and ownership as well as challenging our assumptions about gender.The main character is a likeable anti-hero: his literary ambitions are believable enough that we are almost prepared to forgive his act of plagiarism and to go along with his attempts at self-justification, and there is a satisfying irony in the fact that the success he has always dreamed of does not bring him the happiness he had hoped.The novel is very compelling overall with plenty of twists along the way. One of the ways that Jean Hanff Korelitz sustains our interest is by withholding the details of this supposed 'greatest plot ever' for most of the story. There's perhaps a bit of an anticlimax when we do find out what this amazing twist is, as I'm not sure it quite lives up the hype that the novel creates around it, and the final twist is perhaps a little bit predictable. Nevertheless, this is a well-written and very engrossing read.