S. F. Prescott

Easily one of my favorite books of 2024!

Jean Hanff Korelitz is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels THE PLOT (The 2021 Tonight Show Summer Reads pick), YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN (adapted for HBO as “The Undoing” by David E. Kelley, and starring Nicole Kidman, Hugh Grant and Donald Sutherland), ADMISSION (adapted as the 2013 film starring Tina Fey), THE DEVIL AND WEBSTER, THE WHITE ROSE, THE SABBATHDAY RIVER and A JURY OF HER PEERS. A new novel, THE LATECOMER, will be published on May 31st, 2022. Her company BOOKTHEWRITER hosts “Pop-Up Book Groups” in person in NYC and online, where small groups of readers can discuss new books with their authors. http://www.bookthewriter.com

Published October 1st, 2024

They say sequels are never as good as the first book, but I enjoyed this one just as much. The author, Jean Hanff Korelitz, created such an interesting premise that I couldn’t put it down. Some sequels pick up years after the original story, but this one begins in the wake of (spoiler alert) Jake’s death. (Btw, if you haven’t read The Plot then do so immediately!) Anna Williams-Bonner, widow of late best selling author, Jacob Finch Bonner, continues to honor him after his tragic death. Promoting his past work and supporting his upcoming novel, while touring for her own debut, The Afterword. Anna receives a threatening note. Someone knows the truth. And she’s forced to find out who, snuffing out the threat of her dark past for good.

The Sequel picked up perfectly where The Plot left off. And like the first book, this one had me on the edge of my seat. Like all of the author’s books I’ve read so far, the pace is steady and the suspense is palpable. She really knows how to make you root for the most awful characters. Anna is one of the darkest protagonists I’ve ever read and yet, I was desperate for her to succeed in covering her tracks. I was gripped from the first page (already knowing what she was capable of), and the tension only ramped up once she received a note revealing there was someone out there who knew the truth of her past.

Scenes that I still think about include the forest where she was forced to dig her own grave, and the trip to her old childhood home in Vermont to look for the original manuscript. The way she’d reminisced about watching her brother from the trees at the edge of the property was chilling. The lunch with her agent and publisher at Balthazar was hilarious. The dialogue felt like a behind-the-scenes reveal of industry gossip. The ending was satisfying with no loose ends, even leaving it open for a possible third installation in the series…one can only hope!

For readers who enjoy an elevated thriller with clever twists, a flawed protagonist, and a book within a book.

Synopsis:

Anna Williams-Bonner has taken care of business. That is to say, she’s taken care of her husband, bestselling novelist Jacob Finch Bonner, and laid to rest those anonymous accusations of plagiarism that so tormented him. Now she is living the contented life of a literary widow, enjoying her husband’s royalty checks in perpetuity, but for the second time in her life, a work of fiction intercedes, and this time it’s her own debut novel, The Afterword. After all, how hard can it really be to write a universally lauded bestseller?

But when Anna publishes her book and indulges in her own literary acclaim, she begins to receive excerpts of a novel she never expected to see again, a novel that should no longer exist. That it does means something has gone very wrong, and someone out there knows far too much: about her late brother, her late husband, and just possibly… Anna, herself. What does this person want and what are they prepared to do? She has come too far, and worked too hard, to lose what she values most: the sole and uncontested right to her own story. And she is, by any standard, a master storyteller.