Spoilers!
You would never see a reality competition show where seven authors are isolated on an island and after a certain amount of time, each of their works are blindly judged, with the winner offered a $1 million publishing deal. Writers would watch that to glean any sort of magic insight, of course, but what would happen?! A split screen of seven people at their laptops, pacing, agonizing, engaging in their writerly rituals?! Close-ups of a whirring coffee machine?! But of course, take this scenario, add a killer, and now you have Evelyn Clarke’s 2026 book, The Ending Writes Itself, a sinister lampooning (and lambasting) of the cut-throat publishing industry. Evelyn Clarke is a pseudonym for authors V.E. Schwab and Cat Clarke, who teamed up for this macabre tale. I read it one sitting Saturday because it was such propulsive and pulpy fun. If nothing else, writers love reading about writers (and writing about writers), and every insecurity and imposter syndrome expression echoed by the authors of this story resonated with me, naturally.
Arthur Fletch is a best-selling author whose books regularly top the New York Times best sellers list, but it was his spin-off of a spin-off (of a spin-off?) series starring Julia Petrarch, a detective, that put Fletch into the stratosphere. He’s become a recluse (naturally) and ostentatious with his wealth (not so naturally), buying an entire island off the Scottish coast known as Skelbrae. He was writing the last book in the series, already about 90,000 words into his usual 100,000-words-long books, when he dies in a drowning accident. Eleanor Vandenberg, Fletch’s ruthless (damn near sociopathic) agent, conspires with his editor, Ava Paulson, of Merriweather Press, to salvage the situation. They worry that without the final book in the series, Merriweather Press will go under as a publishing house. So, they decide to do the aforementioned quasi-reality show: invite six authors from the “midlist” to Skelbrae, where they will receive $1 million for ghostwriting the ending to his book, along with an additional $1 million, three-book deal with Merriweather Press. Midlist? Authors who are published, but well, middling in their sales. They’re not particularly well known. Which is precisely what Vandenberg seeks. Ava will also pretend to be one of the authors, known as the romance author Priscilla, to gain clandestine insight into how they are as people. Her assistant, Holden, who is actually the nephew of the owner of the publishing house, will pretend to be Fletch’s editor, Rufus.
The midlist:
- Sienna and Malcolm, the tandem writers (befitting!) of the Penn Stonely pseudonym thriller series. They’re also a married couple, or at least, were. Sienna is leaving him. Both personally and professionally, she’s done with Malcolm, who is an asshole in both respects. She feels like she’s doing the heavy lifting in each relationship. However, when they received the letter from Fletch (so they thought) inviting them to this salon, Sienna agreed to one last go-around as “Penn Stonely” to chase glory. For his part, Malcolm comes from a rich family, and he’s always been trying to prove to his father he can make it as an author. Instead, he was middling at best, and it was Sienna’s contributions, and the creation of Penn Stonely, that began to elevate him.
- Millie, the YA author, who is overly chirpy and enthusiastic, but also the most liable to scream and whimper if something goes afoul. She grew up under restrictive, controlling God-fearing parents, and she’s been resentful ever since, particularly because her much younger sister didn’t have the same experience. As an adult now, Millie writes the books she would have wanted to read as a youngster. She’s the most regimented of the bunch, too, churning out 3,000 words daily, “rain or shine,” as she says. She’ll have the first draft to Rufus then, of course.
- Jaxon, the sci-fi author, is the seeming stereotypical “bro” of the group who looks like he lifts 20 hours a day and would buy crypto. Instead, as it turns out, he’s not only an insecure writer (redundant), but perhaps overcompensating given his brutal, aggressive father. Indeed, he was named after his father, Oswald Jackson, Jr. So, Jaxon (with an X to differentiate himself!) is a pseudonym. He’s also the most obvious red herring killer, well next to our next writer.
- Kenzo, the horror author, who is the only one that sees writing as a fun side gig while he works as a forensic scientist (one informs the other!). In other words, he’s not sweating the ruthlessness of the publishing industry or chasing fame and glory. We probably get the least insight into him comparatively, though.
- Cate, the novice, which is to say, the only unpublished author of the group, who Vandenberg decided to take a chance on. She’s 23, mousy, unsure, and apparently chasing the dream of being an author because it was her mother’s dream.
So, as I go into books blindly, that means seven authors counting Priscilla (although, really six since “Penn Stonely” is one!).
The authors have 72 hours to write the ending. And they have to do it on typewriters since all of their digital devices are confiscated and locked behind a safe, the same safe that is counting down the time. As Kenzo notes, an analog world makes things scarier! It’s also just them in the castle, with Rufus in a cottage in the front, not to be disturbed. This is a difficult challenge because not only are you trying to write a satisfying ending to a book, but an entire series, and if you haven’t familiarized yourself with Fletch’s series beforehand, then you’re already behind. Plus, you’ve been taken out of your writerly ritual comfort zone by being forced to use a typewriter and with the threat of competition all around you. Fascinating.
Oh, and there’s another elusive “prize” within the castle: an apocryphal (so they think) golden book Fletch had made that would be worth as much, if not more, than the competition’s prize money.
As I mentioned at the top, though, it wouldn’t be much of a book if it was like, “And then they started writing.” Instead, there’s fun interplay between them, heightening tensions, backstory, and also as mentioned, lambasting the cut-throat nature of the publishing industry, agents, editors, and publishing houses alike. All of them have had terrible experiences in the industry, except Cate, which only serves to frighten her. I believe it’s Sienna who will try to caution that it’s not all bad, or maybe it was Priscilla, which would make more sense. Plus, threats and murder begin, along with a mystery. Threat: Millie receives a note in her typewriter (with a wonky G) that states, Get out. Suspicion abounds. Mystery: Malcolm swears he saw someone who looked like Fletch when they arrived on the island because Fletch always wore a recognizable red hat. Later, Sienna sees someone wearing a red hat in the castle. Murder: As Kenzo states, when it comes to a horror story, you’re trying to ascertain who the “Final Girl” will be, which necessarily means, expecting the deaths of the others.
Cate seemed like the obvious pick for the “Final Girl” initially because we started the book from her perspective, and she’s the most inexperienced of them all, i.e., the most “innocent,” classic “Final Girl” material. Sienna, who is christened with “main character energy,” was definitely not the final girl, as she was the first to die. After a fight with Malcolm, where she breaks off their deal and decides to win the competition solo, she is pushed down the stairs whereupon her heavy metal typewriter bludgeons her to death. We obviously don’t yet know who pushed her. Thereafter, Malcolm tries to investigate her death, and being the narcissist that he is, he uses Sienna even in death to (he thinks) propel him to his next level of author success. Instead, he foolishly falls off the side of a cliff by accident, but Jaxon, who likes to run in the mornings, tried to save him only to be accused of pushing him by Millie. That made me suspect Millie and her motives, but again, she has so much childhood trauma informing her worldview and literal view of what she’s seeing. Out of caution, they lock Jaxon in his room. He figures out how to end Fletch’s book and furiously begins writing, only for the killer to appear through a secret doorway and strangle him to death.
Interlude: Before the mayhem began in earnest, we did get the needle drop that Priscilla was really Ava, when “Rufus” nearly gave up the ruse by entering the castle, whereafter Ava chastised him. Rufus is then spooked being in the cottage all alone, and knowing his uncle has promised him promotion to senior editor (meritless) after one year, he flees on the yacht. And he actually never comes back! He genuinely got away.
Back to murder. At this point, I honestly didn’t know who it could be. I mean, obviously Cathy seemed too innocent, but I was thinking the killer must be someone in the castle unknown to the authors who was using the secret passageways to get around and disturb the contest, and ultimately kill the writers.
Once Jaxon’s body is found by Millie and Priscilla, Millie, holding a mace (Fletch had a lot of weapons in his castle), riles herself up thinking the killer must be Priscilla. And she’s so damn sick of the paternal way in which Priscilla acts, triggering his trauma response. Cate then bludgeons Millie to death from behind, ostensibly at first to protect Priscilla. However, Priscilla clocks right away that Cate bludgeoned Millie more than once. Ope. Cate then reveals that she’s already killed Kenzo with one of the pointy antler trophies downstairs (a Chekhov’s gun, she learns from Priscilla). Chatty Cate reveals that she despised her mother, who chased her author dream at the cost of being a real mother, and that Cate’s real motive was finding the golden book, which she has. That’s what she bludgeoned Millie with. A chase and fight ensues between Cate and Priscilla, where ironically, Priscilla is able to escape Cate in a boat while Cate drowns because she wouldn’t let go of the golden book.
Merriweather Press decides to print Fletch’s unfished manuscript and let the readers run with their own imagination of how it would end. It’s a huge success. I do wish to know what lightbulb epiphanies Sienna and Jaxon respectively had about how to end the series, though! And lo and behold in the Epilogue, Kenzo survived, thanks to the help of a Scottish man still on the island (the previous owner), who was close to Fletch. He was the one in the red hat Malcolm and Sienna saw. Vandenberg, Ava, and Holden carefully curate a book deal and book tour with him. The man who never wanted it gladly becomes the publishing puppet. And Vandenberg completes the sociopathic picture by not caring about all the death and mayhem (and for her part, Ava also doesn’t seem all that broken up about it either) — indeed, she chose these midlist authors not only because they’re not well known, but because they wouldn’t be missed — and by keeping Sienna’s dog in her purse (classic villain image!).
But how did Cate manage to get Vandenberg’s attention? Well, that’s the only suspension of disbelief moment that strained believability. She fed all of Fletch’s books into ChatGPT and used what it spat out as her query letter to Vandenberg. Either Vandenberg is an idiot for not catching that, or she didn’t care because Cate was an unknown and would spice up the competition. (The other more minor suspension of disbelief disruptive moment is that in a castle filled with authors, few of them actually scoped out the library! Sure, it was a self-aggrandizing monument to Fletch, holding all of his books, but still.)
What a clever book because as each reveal occurred, I’d flip back to see if they showed their hand previously, and they did, sneakily! Or didn’t, sneakily! That is, even Priscilla’s chapter early on could work if she was who she said she was — the romance author —, but it also worked as who she really was, the editor scoping out her potential authors. Or the true Chekhov’s gun of Jaxon’s discarded hoodie right where Kenzo is impaled by the deer antler that he uses to staunch the blood and survive. I had so much fun with this, and of course, any aspiring writer is going to have fun with the lampooning of the publishing industry. All in good horrific fun, right?
I wonder now if “Evelyn Clarke” will return; they did tease at the end that it was the end … or was it? Here’s to hoping!
[As for that magic insight into writing? Spoiler alert: there is no one-quick trick. The “trick” is to write.]
