Reviews tagging 'Addiction'

The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz

29 reviews

atamano's review

dark mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder

Moderate: Fire/Fire injury, Pregnancy, Death of parent, Child death, Death, Adult/minor relationship, Toxic relationship, and Sexism

Minor: Addiction, Alcohol, and Alcoholism

jkononova's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

I breezed through this book in two days, and here are my thoughts! The Plot was firmly a three-star read for me; it was very entertaining and scratched a very specific literary itch that I was feeling, but not a book I'm likely to think much about much after turning its final page. I found that the writing throughout the unraveling of the main mystery was a bit too hand-hold-y (read: a loooot of foreshadowing) and not fucked up enough for my tastes, but I still thoroughly enjoyed reading the story, though I'll admit that I started skimming through a good fraction of the words on each page when I was roughly 80% through the book. (For context, this opinion is coming from someone who loves Gillian Flynn's writing and actively relishes in how disturbed I feel when reading her books.) I also endlessly support all authors that explicitly and intelligently call out misogyny in their work, which Jean did here several times, in ways that were direct but still felt natural to the story, so cheers to that!

I had a couple gripes with the writing, mainly that, in my opinion, it fell a bit too into the "tell, not show" category, which felt deeply ironic and out-of-place for a book so centered around quality literature. Additionally, there seemed to be a lack of commas after introductory clauses, which made the book somewhat challenging to read out loud, especially with how long-winded some of the sentences were (not sure if this is just a problem with the Libby version of the book).

The book-in-the-book Crib seemed to suffer from some of the same issues, almost like a pale imitation of a Gillian Flynn novel.

(Though, to be fair, this may just be a combination of the challenges of writing in third person and deliberate stylistic choices. And also, like, I have exactly zero best-selling books in publication, so what do I really know about good writing that the author doesn't, lol.)

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Content Warnings

Minor: Death, Child abuse, Death of parent, Drug use, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, Abandonment, Addiction, and Adult/minor relationship

soft_plush's review against another edition

mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

I have this book a 4 because it was better than I was expecting. Yes I kind of guessed the twist, but even before I got to the twist I was second guessing myself if I was correct. Turns out I had guessed correctly but still was kind of shocked by the end. Better than expected in my opinion. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Drug use, Death, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Drug abuse, Cursing, Grief, Murder, Suicide, and Toxic relationship

Moderate: Alcohol, Addiction, Drug abuse, and Drug use

Minor: Alcohol and Cursing

in my opinion Anna was wrong about Jake stealing in a sense she said that he stole Evans story which in turn Evan stole her story from the beginning. I personally don’t see how jake could have known because he only barely remembered Evans original plot to begin with but I could have just read it wrong or differently who knows.

dexkit10's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Suicide, Emotional abuse, Violence, Bullying, Child abuse, Drug abuse, Murder, Child death, Death, and Fire/Fire injury

gabyjo's review against another edition

mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Emotional abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Pregnancy, Drug abuse, Addiction, and Death

londonsetterby's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Gaslighting, Murder, Stalking, Addiction, Child abuse, Child death, and Pregnancy

Minor: Vomit

Death from anaphylactic food allergy

kcelena's review against another edition

dark sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Adult/minor relationship, Death of parent, Death, Murder, Stalking, and Pregnancy

Moderate: Toxic relationship, Alcohol, Adult/minor relationship, Drug abuse, Addiction, Drug use, and Suicide

sibertooth's review against another edition

funny mysterious tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Welp. I just stayed up till the middle of the night to finish this, which isn't something I generally do these days.

What's so fun about this book is that it starts out as a bog-standard MFA Dramedy – you know, with the stalled next novel and the awful student stories and all that – and then turns into a thriller while, to all appearances, keeping the MFA Dramedy scope and stakes. It is genuinely tense and gripping to read about this guy worrying that he's bargained away his self-respect and is about to lose his career.

It gets more conventional later on, and I guessed both big twists (the one in the main story and the one in the within-a-story) somewhat in advance, but that's an expected part of the thriller-reading experience, right?

Tone-wise (as opposed to plot-wise), the ending did seem to come out of left field, and that soured things a tiny bit for me. But this is still a heck of a ride.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Fire/Fire injury

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Stalking, Vomit, Abortion, Addiction, Alcohol, and Suicide

Minor: Sexism, Sexual harassment, and Pregnancy

ben_jammin's review against another edition

mysterious tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No

3.5

This book followed the philosophy of one of it's more unlikeable characters: that novels are supposed to be purely plot-driven. I didn't really care what happened to Jake himself, I just wanted the "plot" to be revealed.

The twist at the end was interesting, but all the call-backs were a bit heavy-handed. At some points, I found myself wishing I could read Jake's book rather that The Plot, but I think the ending brought me back around on this desire.

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Content Warnings

Minor: Abortion, Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, and Child death

hannahleewhite's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder and Toxic relationship

Moderate: Pregnancy, Adult/minor relationship, and Fire/Fire injury

Minor: Addiction and Drug abuse