See the hottest books publishing this Summer

What readers think of The Sequel, plus links to write your own review.

Summary |  Excerpt |  Reading Guide |  Reviews |  Beyond the book |  Read-Alikes |  Genres & Themes |  Author Bio

The Sequel by Jean Hanff Korelitz

The Sequel

The Book Series #2

by Jean Hanff Korelitz
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (15):
  • Readers' Rating (2):
  • First Published:
  • Oct 1, 2024, 304 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Reviews

Page 1 of 1
There are currently 2 reader reviews for The Sequel
Order Reviews by:

Write your own review!

Bonnie G

The Sequel is a worth sequel
The Sequel is as much fun for voracious readers as The Plot. Sprinkled throughout a solid mystery thriller, Hanff Korelitz slyly winks to the peculiarities of the book business. She saves her sharpest knives for book signings, the idea of sequels, agents and editors, book festivals, and those deluded souls who read the Goldfinch and decided they too can write a novel about a boy who was in a museum explosion and hung onto a priceless painting. But this is only back drop to the real mystery - which is how is Anna, the widow of author Jacob Finch Bonner, going to extricate herself from clutches of someone (or someones) who know her real identify and deepest darkest secrets.

Remarkably, Hanff Korelitz (sort of) makes you root for Anna, despite the body count piling up in this novel. This is not a spoiler. If you read The Sequel as a sequel to The Plot, you know you are in for some dastardly and unexpected twists and turns. The Sequel does not necessarily have to be read after The Plot because Hanff Korelitz gives us lots of sign posts and information and reminders about how Anna has found herself the widow of a famous author in the first place, but it is a much better book read as a sequel.
Labmom55

It’s not a stand-alone
What a fitting title for a book that is exactly what it claims, a sequel. Jacob Finch Bonner is dead, the result of suicide. His wife, Anna Williams-Bonner is overseeing his estate, especially his last book, Crib, which was a success. Then, she writes her own book, The Afterword, which also becomes a success.

The book is a slow burn at the start. Anna is forced out onto a book tour, which is as tedious for the reader as the writer. On her stop in Denver, there’s a book to be signed with a post-it note “For Evan Parker, not forgotten”. Then when she gets home, in her mail is a copy of a chapter from a manuscript she thought she’d never see again. Her dead brother’s. And additional chapters keep showing up.

Anna is not a nice person and as the story goes along, we see exactly how unlikeable she is. Still, she is engaging. It’s a fine art for a writer to create an unlikeable character that you still want to spend time with. I was really torn over whether I wanted there to be justice.
I enjoyed the back and forth between Anna’s take on things and the manuscript’s. Korelitz slowly ramps up the tension with each new chapter sent. Anna is not going to let anyone disrupt the life she’s worked so hard to obtain.
This should not be read as a stand-alone. It will make much better sense if you have read The Plot beforehand. In fact, I had to go back and refresh my memory of The Plot.
I was lucky to have both the e-book and the audio for this story. Julia Whelan did a great job as the narrator. But I appreciated having the book to go back over some key points in the book.

Also, I wouldn’t have cottoned to the use of other sequels as chapter headings if not for the e-book (and the list in the back). I never knew there was a sequel to Catch-22.
My thanks to Netgalley, Celadon Book and Macmillan Audio for the advance copies.
  • Page
  • 1

Beyond the Book:
  Book Tours Behind the Scenes

BookBrowse Book Club

  • Book Jacket
    The Ghostwriter
    by Julie Clark
    From the instant New York Times bestselling author of The Last Flight and The Lies I Tell comes a dazzling new thriller.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Songs of Summer
    by Jane L. Rosen

    A young woman crashes a Fire Island wedding to find her birth mother—and gets more than she bargained for.

  • Book Jacket

    Erased
    by Anna Malaika Tubbs

    In Erased, Anna Malaika Tubbs recovers all that American patriarchy has tried to destroy.

Who Said...

We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don't like?

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

B a L

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.