ARC Review: Kill All Your Darlings

 

I received an ARC of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This did not affect my opinion of the book or my review itself.

So here's the thing. With Kill All Your Darlings and The Plot both coming out within months of each other, and having many similarities in their storylines, it's inevitable that they will be compared. Some of the reviews even suggest Kill All Your Darlings for fans of The Plot. 

Both feature a creative writing professor, who has a student who writes an incredible story better than anything the professor has read before. Both professors find themselves with a decision to make when their students disappear/never publish, and both professors choose to publish the respective stories under their own names, effectively stealing the words of their students. Both professors have to reckon with what happens when someone threatens to expose them, and when the stories they stole have similarities with real life crimes.

The thing is, The Plot does it better, much better.

I've enjoyed Bell's books in the past, but this one just felt so slow and stretched out to me. The story dragged and felt repetitious. I definitely appreciated Bell writing about a really relevant and important topic, and there were parts that were really suspenseful and interesting. But by the time I got to those last chapters I had lost a lot of my interest, and then the ending was so abrupt.

I think Kill All Your Darlings does suffer for coming out within a few months of The Plot. That said, I don't think I would have loved Kill All Your Darlings regardless.