I'm sorry to say that I really didn't get along with this book. I'll start with the positives - I enjoy unreliable narrators in all their forms, so that was also a positive for me. There were times in this novel where it felt like the main character was trying to convince not only us, but herself, of her innocence, and this was an enjoyable exploration into how deeply her desperation to assuage her guilt ran. I think it's a fascinating topic, and it talks well about how so many Asian stories are actually centred around the white experience to make them more marketable. (I have to believe that the fact this novel is from the point of view of a white woman is satire, especially given the fact that she comes across as just awful).

It is well-written and the author clearly has a detailed understanding of the world she is trying to evoke (specifically the publishing world). However, this is also one of the biggest negatives for me. It very quickly started to feel like a factual - and I'm afraid to say, boring - account of the finest details of the publishing process, and there felt to be very little in the way of imagination or creativity. It got to the point where I felt like I was reading a very long list of publishing inside jokes and tidbits. I was hugely missing any sense of plot or interesting dialogue. Not to mention the complete lack of likeable, relatable, or even interesting characters. Every single character felt like a symbol of one very solid moral point - stripping them of any of the 3-Dness (for lack of a better word) that I want in my fictional characters. In the end, I actually found it all quite depressing - I have very little understanding of the publishing world, and I'm sure there are elements of truth in what is presented, but the novel makes it sound like a thoroughly horrid world through and through (stretching to social media, Goodreads etc.), and I have to believe it isn't this bleak.

Unfortunately for me, the bits of plot that do come through towards the end aren't enough to save it. All of the 'twists' I found to be entirely cliche and predictable, and didn't add any layers of complexity to the characters, or to our understanding of the moral question of the novel. The ending is clearly meant to give a sense of the story continuing on after the novel has ended, and supposedly questions how white people often end up coming out of stories like this relatively unscathed. I love a novel that implies its characters and plot will continue on, but frankly I didn't care at all in this case.

What might happen if someone who seems to have it all in the publishing world suddenly dies, giving you access to their latest unseen, unpublished manuscript?

In Yellowface, we find out.

June Hayward has mediocre success with her book, while her friend (although I write this in the loosest of terms) is riding high on the waves of popularity and success in the publishing world. When Athena Liu dies in a freak accident, and June is present, June decides to take the manuscript, polish it and then submit it. The book becomes a massive success, and June begins to enjoy the spoils of being in the publishing spotlight.

However, things start to unravel step by step, and June has to continue to cover her tracks and assume an identity that is not hers.

This is a harrowing, uncomfortable read. But totally compelling. It shows the lengths someone might go when envy shows its ugly face. At times I was shouting at June to do the right thing and come clean. Instead, she continues to fall deeper and deeper into deceit and lies.

I'd definitely read other books by this author.

June Hayward is a Yale graduate author who has written a relatively unsuccessful book, but who has a jealous friendship with the wildly successful author Athena Liu who was her university classmate. When Athena dies in a freak pancake-choking accident, June takes the opportunity to steal Athena's new unpublished manuscript and claim it as her own.

The book is written from June's point of view as she justifies her actions, defends her cultural appropriation (or maybe racism) and deals with the consequences of the theft to herself and others. My feelings towards her swung from sympathy to disgust to condemnation back to sympathy again. I didn't like her but I kind of understood her point of view, which made me examine my own beliefs and values.

A great story with the opportunity for the reader to self-reflect if they want to.

Visceral, enthralling, darkly satirical.

Yellowface is a searing tale of entitlement, guilt, the publishing business, racism and loneliness. Kuang keeps the tension throughout the book at an explosive pitch. There's so much to unpack, the loneliness of being a writer, how envy eats away at you, tokenism and performative diversity in literature, how people can justify any actions that benefit themselves, and the insidious power of social media.

2 stars

I finished this book about a week ago, and honestly, I don't know how to review this because although our unreliable narrator wasn't a good person per se, no one else was good either.
This was a book about bad people being horrible to each other, and the only person I felt bad about was Athena's mother. The rest of the cast. Horrible people.
The only thing this book made perfectly clear for me was how horrible the whole publishing world is.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for the chance to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

Yellowface is going to end up as one of my favourite reads of the year. It is mindblowingly clever whilst still being super accesable and easy to read. I love how we see the microagressions the MC is unaware of and how it brings home a perspective on quite a controversial topic. This is a must read for not just every reader, but everybody.

Yellowface quickly became one of my favourite reads of the year so far. This is just fantastic work from an author I full heartedly pledge allegiance to.

Kuang proves once again why she is one of my all time favourite authors. Her books are challenging, cerebral and inspire me to go off and learn so much more. Yellowface is a biting, sharp-edged satire on racism within publishing, the wider bookish world and asks who gets to control the narrative.

There is just something endlessly delectable about the way Kuang writes. It scratches the right part of my brain, with plenty of research being poured into it but also an incredible way of playing with characters, tropes and plotlines. This is very much a paranoid and tense thriller at times. We have a central mystery to unpick, but the focus is consummately on Athena, June and their complex relationship. Within this, Kuang has so many moments that make you recoil in recognition of how the publishing world works, from reviewing to wider media interest. There is a snake coiled at the heart of this book, dripping venom throughout. It is like being a fly on the office walls at time and emphasises just how much work there is left to do, as shown through constant diversity reports and the strike action that happened during the lead up to publication.

June is a fascinating protagonist, enmeshed in her privilege and constantly dropping these racist microaggressions that spiral into full-on racist rants. She is an interesting voice for Kuang to adopt, skewering a figure many of us can recognise. It is all in the subtext and internal biases that spill out into vitorial and sickening rhetoric. For me, it was the speed at which she decides to steal Athena’s story and from there, it is very much a Talented Mr Ripley level of manipulation to keep her fame and power that she feels she has always ‘deserved’.

Yellowface is an endlessly layered, thought-provoking and prodigious book from one of the best voices of our generation so far.

this book was so interesting and really had you reckoning with morality and story-telling and who to root for. definitely one to read

[4.5 stars]

I adore Kuang's fantasy writing, The Poppy War is one of my favourite books of all time, and Babel is a masterpiece, so I was interested to see how she'd adapt her style to contemporary lit-fic. Well. Judging from my 4.5 stars, I'd say very well!

Yellowface is a brilliant novel, it's a critique of the publishing industry, a story of plagiarism, racism and the online/social media world. Interestingly this story follows the antagonist using a first-person narrative, so you really feel like you're in June's head and it's not a nice head to be in. I found this a really clever approach to both alienate the reader from June and also make us feel part of her extremely poor decisions. This narrative choice throws the reader off completely and makes you not sure what to think!

We all know publishing is very, very hard, but this novel shows us a really in detail look at the process from pitching a book to the winddown of marketing and coming up with the next project. As I've mentioned, we're seeing this through the eyes of June, who has stolen her dead friend's, a popular Chinese-American author, writing about Chinese labourers in WW1 and is passing it off as her own. She is instantly dislikable for how bitter and jealous she is, she is incredibly entitled and this only gets worse throughout the book. I usually have to like at least one character in a book to enjoy the book and I don't know that I did like anyone in Yellowface, but this book was fantastic - actually scratch that, I think Athena's mum was probably the most likeable character.

June plays the victim card a lot during this story, wanting sympathy and never understanding what it is she's done wrong. I started to compare her to the villain in superhero films who keeps getting hit with bullets and debris and yet keeps on pushing forwards for the main fight. June just wouldn't quit. What made her even more interesting was she started off a tiny bit self-aware, she had a conscious to an extent about what she'd done and she believed she was trying to appease that side of her, no matter how poorly.

Usually, you'd get some sort of redeeming character development from the MC but June just slips and slides down that slope into a further bed of plagiarism, racism, stereotyping and basically digging her own grave. Neither June nor Athena is likeable, but we mainly see Athena through June's eyes which makes the narration unreliable and less trustworthy. June tries to pass off her decisions as supportive of the POC community, but she just seems to be doing it for her own gain and to further a positive image of herself. I think every move she makes is for her own redemption, this book starts to mock June's journey and her own lack of self-awareness by the end.

A lot of this book centred around online discourse and cancel culture, with many Tweets being used as examples to further the narrative. This all felt incredibly real, mirroring discourse I'm sure we've all seen online when Twitter drama goes down. At times I felt these scenes became quite repetitive as they were repeated a few times, but this also added to the overall point of the book and the pressures that were building. In general, this book did repeat itself a lot throughout the plot and it did slow down the pacing a little, which is why it didn't quite get a 5-star review from me.

Overall, I felt this book was captivating and addictive, full of really interesting thought points and a great step into a new genre for Kuang.

Well, this was a little different to what I usually read but I was so intrigued by the synopsis, I thought I'd give it a spin and I am so glad I did.
We start with an accident, two friends on a night out. One successful author, Athena Liu, the other still aspiring, June Hayward. Athena dies. June steals her nearly finished manuscript. An experimental novel concerning Chinese labour inclusion in WW1. June completes the work and turns it in as her own. Publishing under a pseudonym, Juniper Song, and using an obscure author photo, to blur her heritage.
And so begins a fight. For June to try and keep the naysayers quiet. There are those who claim she stole Athena's book. Those who claim she actually killed Athena! Those who call her out for cultural appropriation (yellowface), and racism. And it all gets a bit heated on social media. Which also inevitably spills over to real life. And it all snowballs.
It also provides fascinating insight into the publishing industry. Although, being not part of that world, I am not sure how much is fact and what's fiction, but it all comes across as scarily credible. Satire probably, maybe? All a bit tawdry... And quite funny on occasion... Maybe also a little biographical...?
Definitely, gloriously, over the top. And all a bit morally ambiguous for the reader... It would make for a cracking read for a book club. Imagine the discussions..!
All in all, my first read from this author but I am definitely checking her back catalogue. My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

A gloriously satirical look at the publishing industry, social media and racism. Some added horror elements thrown in for good measure make this a must read.

R.F Kuang took my breath away with her debut novel series The Poppy War and has continued to amaze me with her take on real-life world issues. She is simply brilliant and her pen is unmatched! I will never tire of saying she is one of the best writers of this generation and will only continue to grow more. With Yellowface she did not hold back her punches and came straight for the jugular. I am beyond excited to read her future works too! Thank you to netgalley for providing an arc of this book in exchange for my honest review!

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Collins for this ARC! This is probably in my top 5 of most anticipated releases for 2023 so when I saw I’d been approved for it I was BEYOND excited. I’m actually going to see R.F. Kuang on her book tour in a couple of weeks!

This is a literary thriller following June. June has watched her former Yale classmate Athena Liu prosper in the publishing industry as an instant bestseller while June didn’t even get a paperback release. When June witnesses Athena die in a freak accident she acts on impulse and steals Athena’s latest unpublished manuscript and then after “polishing” it she publishes it as her own under the pseudonym “Juniper Song”. After the book’s release however evidence starts to emerge that June did not write “The Last Front” and June scrambles to protect everything she feels she is entitled to and has created for herself.

This book is an intense look at the publishing industry itself and Rebecca paints an incredibly vivid and no holds barred picture of what it is like to publish a book and how the whole process is extremely biased and unfair, especially to “diverse” writers who are seen as a way to meet a diversity quota to meet rather than people.

June Hayward is…an interesting character. She just doesn’t know when to stop! Whenever I thought she’d understood the gravity of what she’d done and would just leave it there she just went and did something else that was even worse. She wants you to empathise with her but she’s only sorry she got caught and continues to blindly bulldoze her way through promotions, events and press conferences while even making herself believe that what she has done is right. That the book is hers because she “polished” it. Not only did she steal the manuscript from her dead friend she then milked more from Athena’s death by making out that they were closer than they were and capitalised on Athena’s mother’s trauma and grief to get what she wanted.

I am clearly white so I cannot comment on being an Asian American writer or person in general but I feel like white people (including our Junie) don’t understand how HARD it is to be seen as anything but your race in places like the publishing industry. Asian authors are treated as if it’s their responsibility to inform white people of their history and their stories and are pressured to only write about that by the industry. June is so jealous of Athena’s success without even acknowledging the work and prejudice she endured to get there.

R.F. Kuang will always be one of my favourite writers of all time, she has proved she can write multiple genres flawlessly and this book definitely lived up to the hype! I can’t wait to meet her! This is released on 25th May 2023 so keep an eye out for it or if you’ve been thinking about pre-ordering it do it now! It’s so worth it!

Well, this was a provocative as it was intending to be.

I found this really entertaining and thought it a clever skewering of commercial publishing.

A narrator who does bad thing after bad thing whole trying to justify her villainous actions, a compelling pressure cooker situation. I am not sure the ending was one I'll remember forever but I am also not sure how else to end this story?

Kuang can actually do anything.

My thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

Every so often a book comes along that is different. Original thrillers are rare. The last time I read a thriller that felt totally original was My Sister the Serial Killer. This book is similar with an amoral lead character in a witty clever thrilling read. On the face of it this is a book about plagiarism set in the world of bookselling. The insights and behind the scenes views of the bookselling world are riveting. Goodreads itself is a main character in this book. However, woven through the whole book are the issues about who can tell someone’s story, cultural appropriation and the nasty side of social media. Deep and complex issues which are handled with a light touch. This book could have been a polemic, but by cleverly and lightly weaving in the themes you reach conclusions yourself unaware of the guiding hand. I devoured this book. I loved every moment.

I was really drawn to this book by the interesting premise. June is such a great unreliable narrator, I spent the whole book being shocked by her audacity, but was never able to stop reading and seeing what she’d do next.

For me, the final third fell off a little, after June had almost been caught a few times it felt a little repetitive, and I felt like the person who finally exposed her was quite obvious.

Nevertheless I really enjoyed this book, it was a really interesting look at the publishing industry and a fast paced fun read.

Yellowface is a visceral read, with biting pace and scathing prose, R.F. Kuang has created much needed commentary on the duplicities of publishing world. June Hayword/Juniper Song is the protagonist we simultaneously hate and root for through Kuang's no-holds-barred characterisation of white fragility.

If you don't feel deep discomfort on many occasions when reading this novel you need to work harder on your empathy! Somebody does something very, very wrong - so what do we want to happen? Yet, as the novel progresses we see how today's society draws lines that seem arbitrary and vicious and based on bandwagon jumping rather than any clear thought processes, and sympathy with the protagonist starts to flicker. I don't think I enjoyed this novel, but mainly because of how it made me feel, how it made me look at the things I take for granted and wonder how it would feel to have those stripped from me. While set in the USA, it would be wrong to assume everything that happens is a USA-only issue. At the close I just feel sad. Sad that this world is not yet at a place when everybody is, feels and is treated equally. There's so much anger, and so little safe conversation.

Thank you to the publishers for providing an ARC for me to read and review.

From the moment I heard that RF Kuang was going to release another novel, I immediately knew that I needed to read it. It doesn’t matter if Kuang decides to release her grocery list one day—I will still consume whatever media that is written by her. The same logic has applied here, when I discovered that she has decided to branch out into other genres apart from the ones she has been well-known for to write.

So you see, I’m not surprised that I gave this 5 stars.

The premise of this book was so interesting and so…meta. RF Kuang writing a literary fiction about someone trying to survive in a publishing company while having this being published by the same company? Absolutely ingenious. This book should have been it for me, the award-winning book I’ve been looking for this year. And it indeed was.

There is just something so glorious about exposing secrets of business companies without explicitly doing it or twisting it in a way that you can’t be directly faulted for. With her voodoo magic, RF Kuang has successfully done that.

Yellowface is about Juniper Hayward 'song' who is a failing writer and one night she watches her friend "rival" dead and stole her book and publisher as her own. This book is very different from her other books. I love R.F. Kuang's fantasy books so much I was wondering if I liked this book as much as her other books.  Yellowface is written from June's perspective. Every decision she took was so chaotic and a lot of times you feel so sorry for her. I kept thinking about what she would do instead of what she did. I loved the writing style. It keeps you engaged. R.F. Kuang's characters were well-written and complex. I think the ending was a little bit expected but overall it was an amazing book to read. I really think that she is an amazing writer and I'll probably read whatever she writes. Finally I just loved the cover. It was perfect. Overall, if you like R.F Kuang you must read this book and if Yellowface is your first R.F Kuang book you should definitely read her other books too. I can't wait to read her next project.