Two and a half years later, Bonner has fallen on even harder times, taking on two additional jobs after his salary was reduced when the MFA program went online-only.

Searching online, he learns that Evan died of a drug overdose just a few months after they last spoke, presumably leaving the book unfinished.

The plot of Crib is revealed gradually through excerpts:  When 15-year-old Samantha becomes pregnant, her religious parents forbid her to have an abortion or put the child up for adoption.

While promoting Crib and its upcoming film adaptation, Bonner meets a radio producer, Anna, and eventually marries her.

Bonner begins to receive emails that threaten to expose him for stealing the story of Crib, and they escalate to public social media posts.

After Bonner's apparent suicide due to depression triggered by baseless accusations of plagiarism, Anna promotes his legacy as well as his third novel, and enjoys the financial proceeds of his work.

It keeps you guessing and wondering, and also keeps you thinking...[the] weighty questions mingle with a love story, a mystery and a striver's journey — three of the most satisfying flavors of fiction out there.

"The Plot" is wickedly funny and chillingly grim, and like the novel Evan hoped to create, it deserves to garner all the brass rings.

[3] Judith Reveal reviewing for the New York Journal of Books says: "Korelitz tends to write heavy in narrative with an abundance of parenthetical asides that don't seem to be entirely necessary.

To say the end of the story is a real twist would be a huge understatement..."[4] Bethanne Patrick reviewing this book for NPR says that one of the most enjoyable things in the novel "is the [early] encounter between Jacob Finch Bonner and his student Evan Parker... these two...white male writers have brief literary fisticuffs during a class..." And, Patrick later writes: "It might be, from a writer of Korelitz's talent, that I wanted and expected a more fiendish and psychologically driven book.

"[5] In January 2022, Onyx Collective won a bidding war for rights to a TV series adapted by showrunner Abby Ajayi based on the novel, planning to release it on Hulu.