The Ending Writes Itself

by Evelyn Clarke ★★★★☆

A cadre of six authors are invited to a "literary salon" at the home of the biggest author in the world, Arthur Fletch. It's the type of invitation that any author would dream of receiving, and even with the remote location (a private island off the coast of Scotland) and the short notice (less than three weeks), all six make arrangements to attend.

Their specialities span genres: crime, like Fletch; but also science fiction, horror, romance, and young adult. The six authors (seven, technically—one is a husband-wife writing team) get acquainted, before a gong sounds and they are greeted by Arthur Fletch's famous agent, Eleanor Vandenberg, and Fletch's editor, a man named Rufus Beaumont. The pair break the bad news to the assembled authors: Arthur Fletch will not be attending the literary salon, because Arthur Fletch is dead.

However, he was dead when the invitations went out. The purpose of the gathering is to complete his final book, something he got to 90% complete before his untimely death. The authors have three days to write an ending to the last in the most famous mystery series on the planet. One will be selected as the winner and will receive a million-dollar cash prize for their efforts. Technology devices are collected and locked in a safe, and the competition begins.

It doesn't take long for the authors to find any way possible to procrastinate, one of many tongue-in-cheek moments that I'm sure the collective writing team of bestselling author V.E. Schwab and longtime friend and author/screenwriter Cat Clarke enjoyed including. The novel reads as much like an inside joke for each other (and authors in general), one in which they delighted imagining their peers' response to reading a nugget of industry insider information as much as a deft plot point. The pair also use the characters' collective struggles as authors to call out the harshness of the publishing industry. "This industry is broken," one character says. "Publishing can pretend that it cares about discovering talent, fostering talent, but it's just a machine, chewing people up, spitting out their work. If this weekend has taught me anything, it's that nobody's happy. Nobody wins."

The novel is, as a whole, fine. It was a little too unserious for me, a bit too contrived, and even a bit derivative. The Ending Writes Itself reads as much like a Clue screenplay as it does a novel. I did appreciate the ending, which bumped it up to a low 4-star rating, but this was more run-of-the-mill than something truly memorable. This one is fine if you'd like a page-turner for the beach, but it's not required reading for 2026.

---

Quick Facts

• Title: The Ending Writes Itself

• Author: Evelyn Clarke

• Publisher: Harper

• Release Date: April 7, 2026

• Format: Ebook

• ISBN-13: 978-0063444645

• Pages: 352