Thank you HTP Books #partner, for the advanced e-copy of The Fiction Writer in exchange for my honest review.
Publisher: Park Row Books
Published: November 28, 2023
Summary:
Last night I dreamt I went to Malibu again…
The once-rising literary star Olivia Fitzgerald is down on her luck. Her most recent novel–a retelling of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca–was a flop, her boyfriend of nine years just dumped her and she’s battling a bad case of writer’s block. So when her agent calls her with a high-paying ghostwriting opportunity, Olivia is all too willing to sign the NDA.
At first, the write-for-hire job seems too good to be true. All she has to do is interview Henry “Ash” Asherwood, a reclusive mega billionaire, twice named People‘s Sexiest Man Alive, who wants her help in writing a book that reveals a shocking secret about his late grandmother and Daphne du Maurier. But when Olivia arrives at his Malibu estate, nothing is as it seems. The more Olivia digs into his grandmother’s past, the more questions she has–and before she knows it, she’s trapped in a gothic mystery of her own.
With as many twists and turns as the California coast, The Fiction Writer is a page-turner that explores the boundaries of creative freedom and whose stories we have the right to tell.
My thoughts:
This is the third book I’ve read by Jillian Cantor and I just love her writing style. I was thrilled that this was also an early reads selection for the @thoughtsfromapage patreon group and I loved our group chat as well as being able to hear from the author.
Rebecca is one of my favorite classics and as soon as I heard about this book, I knew I had to read it. I loved the way Jillian Cantor used that book to create her own story, her own version of a retelling of Rebecca, including pulling bits of Daphne du Maurier’s own life into the story. I also loved the book within a book construct – that is always one of my favorite ways to tell a story and it works so well here to keep the mystery and tension building throughout the book.
Besides the mystery that is woven throughout the book, I loved the themes that Cantor brought up within this book – the idea of plagiarism in novels and who has the right to tell a story. It definitely provides some food for thought for sure and this is something we as a book club discussed and then we were able to hear the author’s point of view on, which was pretty neat.
I very much enjoyed this one and it left me wanting to revisit Rebecca and find all the other books that have been based on or inspired by it.
