It's manipulative in the following ways:

1. The good guys win, the bad guys lose

2. Going along with (1) there's the morality message

3. The events in the book serve the purpose of the plot

4. Lots of books are formulaic, i.e. the author found a formula that sells.

5. There's got to be a beginning, middle, and end.

6. Many novels are written as a series of cliffhangers. Crichton would do that, as would the Outlander series, etc.

Real life is much more messy and unpredictable, hence more interesting.

The problem I have with biographies and documentaries is that they overlay order and narrative on this 'messy and unpredictable' reality. If anything, that's more manipulative than a good novel that is rooted in deep research/domain knowledge and that doesn't claim to be 'objective'.

Historical accounts are always biased, usually according to the political correctness of the time they were written. For example, the Founding Fathers went from hero to goat to hero to goat and are now morphing back to heroic status with the play "Hamilton".

Civil War heroes are goats today, even having their memorials removed.

Edison has gone from hero to goat. He'll be a hero again in a few decades.

It's the job of a professional historian to try and discern the truth from all this. But whatever truth there is in fiction is impossible to determine if you know nothing about history.