Imagine yourself as a writer struggling to write a followup novel. Your first had some successes, your second not as much. In the meantime, you’re “teaching” at a creative writing seminar. One of your students has a plot, a really good plot actually, that even a jerk of a student couldn’t mess up. You wait years, but the book never seems to get published. Then you find out the student has died without ever publishing the book. Would you write the plot yourself? Would you consider that stealing a plot from another writer? These are the things that Jake, our protagonist, must consider and then live with when he finds himself in exactly that situation. I really enjoyed this one. I loved the mystery of who was behind the mysterious messages. I loved how the author tied together the pieces. I even loved the book-within-a-book premise, where here and there you read a few pages of the novel Jake had written. Overall, five stars. I’m so glad I read this one! Thank you so much to BookishFirst, Celadon Books, and Jean Hanff Korelitz for my copy!