Rebecca F Kuang has established herself, within a short span of time, as one of world’s top Fantasy authors and I am thankful to HarperCollins, UK for the e-ARC of her first Literary thriller—Yellowface—through NetGalley in exchange for my unbiased review.

Juniper Song Hayward’s dream of becoming a successful writer is going nowhere, not the least because she is a basic white girl with nothing unusual in her blood or background. Athena Liu, on the other hand, is everything that June isn’t: she is as diverse, as attractive and as exotic as they come, and a terrific writer to boot—a surefire bestseller. June and Athena are friends for quite some time, albeit not too close, probably due to the unbridgeable contrast between the two. One fateful night, they both are alone in Athena’s posh home—June’s first visit there—when Athena dies, in the silliest of all the ways to die. Having just read an impressive sample of the first draft of Athena’s latest magnum opus only a few minutes ago, when the author was well and alive, June carries it home in the chaos that follows Athena’s death. As she reads it, June convinces herself to appropriate the novel for herself, and for once, live Athena’s life—a life she could only look on with jealousy so far. Circumstances such as Athena’s reticence about her works in progress make sure that the duplicity stays hidden and soon, June becomes the most sought after, rising young star in the literary firmament.

But fame is fickle—more so when it is measured by the number of followers one has on the unreliable, unpredictable platforms of social media. It does not take long for the faceless populace hiding behind social media handles to throw someone from the loftiest of pedestals to the rubbish heap and, exacerbated by her own guilt, June’s life becomes a living hell where she begins to question her own sanity. But she can’t let go of this new life—even with all its evils—and gets herself more and more entrapped in the quagmire. Will June be destroyed by the unrelenting, multi-pronged attacks or will she be able to control the narrative and come out on top?

Through the unreliable, oftentimes annoying voice of June, Kuang narrates the story of the American publishing industry: how bestsellers are manufactured and how big a part social media—purportedly ignored by all writers—plays in making or breaking a book, and its author. The plot moves forward at a nice pace as June unwraps layer after layer of her relation with Athena and her own past all the while explaining all that it takes to write, sell and publish a book, and promote it, in a darkly humorous, satirical vein. Neither June nor Athena come across as likeable characters—perhaps as intended by Kuang—and the novel isn’t any worse for it. In fact, June’s eloquent rationalisation of her actions, through which she tries to manipulate everyone around her including the reader, is as amusing as it is infuriating. Yellowface also doubles as a scathing commentary on the Americans’ obsession with the exotic and the wickedness of social media that is capable of driving someone to the extremes. As much as I liked June’s monologue, it does get a tad repetitive at places.

But there are more things to like than dislike with Yellowface and I enjoyed it a lot. Having read this—my first taste of Kuang’s writing—I am now eager to get to her fantasy bestsellers as soon as possible.

It was entertaining but not exactly engaging. I like Kuang's writing, self absorbed as it is. I had fun while reading but I never wanted to pick it up again once I'd put it down so it was also a chore to finish.

The second half especially feels like a drag where it gets repetitive and the story almost stops every so often just for the main character, whose name I've already forgotten, to wax poetic about the publishing industry and it just got to be too much. The ending was almost comical and left me unsatisfied.

I understand the project and I appreciate what it was trying to do but it would've worked better for me had it been a tad more subtle. That being said, reading this has made me realise that while I love reading I simply don't care enough about the publishing industry to read a whole book about it. At least not when its a published version of the latest twitter drama.

The more I sit with Yellowface, the more I don't like it. Does that mean it's a bad book? No but I feel like Yellowface wanted to do two different things at once: Be a Culture Critic Novel about racism in publishing — mainly the rhetoric of diversity sells, who can write whose story, ownvoices, diasporans exploiting homecountry trauma for success, etc (but we can sum whole thing up witb REPRESENTATION)—and also a Character Study into this racist white woman who thinks she's a progressive. It achieves neither.

Before I critique further, a disclaimer is that I'm a huge fan of the author, especially her The Poppy War trilogy, so I obviously had high expectations when diving into this.

Lets see what went well.

- Yellowface is a block hammer that smashes against the rainbow/diversity capitalism deeply embedded publishing industry culture. It explores how publishing fosters diversity sells rhetoric while leaving its marginalised authors without any safeguards, its willingness and eagerness to embrace whitewashed narratives of history and culture of BIPOC by white people over choosing marginalised voices, and the whole PR game. No one can misinterpret this novel.

- The prose is much simpler and accessible than most litfic, swiftly flowing to match the relentless pace of the book.

Now to trace back to what went to hell

- Over half of the book is twitter discourse. I could scroll through my TL and get the same info without spending hours reading it and most of what's presented is something we already know. We know Twitter thrives on harassment, the performative public apologies that come up after every discourse, the GC deserting. The whole spiel.

- The book felt very fractured in its exploration of representation. Again, nothing new. RFK's bold writing style is not a good fit for the more subtler demands of litfic and while it works very well in SFF, in Yellowface, it just felt very loud. There is no room for interpretation.

-I could feel that RFK drew deeply upon her experiences as a POC in publishing to write this but I often struggled in differentiating voice in this book.

Yellowface was not exactly what I wanted and that's fine. I also read a very early arc, so things can be subject to heavy changes before the final copy is pubbed next year.

Best wishes to RFK and would definitely be reading whatever she writes even though Yellowface missed the mark by quite a bit.

And shoutout to team at HarperFiction for yeeting an earc via Netgalley me after my feral screaming on twitter in exchange for an honest review. You guys are amazing

HOLY SHIT.
I bet any other author could have tried with a premise like this and would have inevitably failed. No one writes morally grey like R.F. Kuang and I'm saying this because my anxiety skyrocketed the more I read + I'm still haunted by these characters days later. It basically was like a trainwreck from beginning to end, where you know things are only getting worse but you're still so weirdly fascinated with it you can't stop looking.

I'm positive I've never read something so meta in my entire life. This one is for the publishing industry nerds, and honestly I foresee this being very difficult to market outside of such a niche community. It was so in-depth into the industry it made my heart sing and despare at the same time (as a publishing post-graduate first and then as a compulsive reader part of the online community). It managed to highlight a slew of things that make publishing not such a great place to be at in very few pages and I'm amazed. To me this book kind of felt like a very long article but with twists and turns. Now I know why they released arcs so early (looking at you, HarperCollins 👀). Book twitter will have a field day with this one...

What a choice to have the main narrative voice be the plagiarizer (and in first person at that). Both Athena and June are awful people, and I love that neither of them is a saint, but reading the entire thing from June's pov? Insane. She's a frustrating character, not gonna lie, but she's also deliciously realistic as a two-faced, self-absorbed and dishonest manipulator that always has an excuse ready. She goes out of her way to say to the reader that she wants to do something for poc every chance she gets, but the reality is that she's a bitch trying to profit from it all in an industry that lets her do it. Sometimes it's subtle, sometimes it's not too difficult to miss her slipping into a plain wrong mentality and lol, basic whiteness. You think you're safe as the external reader? Not a chance. I'm not proud to say I fell straight into R.F. Kuang's trap, because was I seriously rooting for such a cheater the entire time? This book brainwashed me into supporting someone who stole a whole manuscript immediately after witnessing the author's death and reaching stardom by publishing it as her own. I got to the point where I was scared she was going to get caught and hoped she would get out of it unscathed. My brain ignored all the red flags and procedeed to scam me until the very end. I mean, of course I ended up wishing she would kill someone to shut them up. Of course I got second-hand anxiety from her messing up with her publishing team and at her events. Of course I cared about her mental health. Am I okay or what? Is it time for me to get theraphy too?

On the other hand, Athena is harder to grasp. You really need to have the whole picture with her, which you only get by reading the book till the end. I loved the way RFK slowly built her character. You only read about her from June's perpective when she's already dead and still she comes through as the main character, not less because June is literally obsessed with her. Well-written toxic friendships are my bread and butter and the one in here was one of my favorites. The way it was dealt with: nothing less of spectacular. I found June's morality to be the most interesting aspect of this book, but the relationship between her and Athena comes in second for sure.

Much care went into the secondary characters too. Even when they only fully appeared once or twice, they always had a well-rounded story behind them. I can apply that specifically to the publishing team and Geoff. From that last one it's again apparent and so on-the-nose how me and RFK's morally grey characters just work together. What can I say? I'm fascinated with them. Geoff reminded me of so many white male authors on twitter but he just had a pull. I loved that he was so pathetic, that I never knew what he was going to do and then, when I least expected it and as naturally as possible, he showed a completely different side to himself.

There are a couple of things I didn't completely enjoy, mainly the pop culture references (way too many, half of them were necessary, the others not so much), and the ending. Overall the ending itself wasn't bad, I loved how it wrapped up, but that final showdown bordered on cartoonish and because of that it was hard to take it seriously. I also feel like the final chapter is missing, although I understand what this novel is actually supposed to be (have I said meta already?).

In conclusion, an amazing foray into general fiction by R.F. Kuang. I swear this woman can do no wrong. Give her whatever topic to write about and I bet she can create something incredible out of the most boring premise. I think it's impressive how she took these modern controversies and wrote them into a twisty unputdownable story. It seems to me like it's a new experiment from her but at the same time a really smart jab at publishing too.
I wouldn't say it's a perfect book and I'm unsure if I would reread it like The Poppy War trilogy; however I can't exclude it won't live in my mind rent free as I still catch myself heavily thinking about it.

This was such a good read !!! Its a fast-paced and seriously addictive book to read.
Yellow face examines some unsettling truths and draws your attention to the numerous racial concerns that exist today.
It focuses on June, a racist white woman who is perhaps the most despicable and unlikeable character I have ever encountered!! She steals an unpublished manuscript of her recently deceased Chinese-American friend and publishes it as her own.
All in all, this is a fantastic book and well worth a read.
Thank you to NetGalley and Harpercollins uk for this riveting ARC

I loved the premise of this book and it really highlighted the prejudices and inadequacies built into the publishing world. A great twist and really funny, in a dark way.

I'm a sucker for novels set within the publishing world, and you through in a Ripley-esque twist... my dream book is born. I read this in one setting and loved how scathing, dark, funny and compulsively readable it was. I'll be recommending this one in a big way!

My review for book with a single sentence would be Kuang never disappoints. It was such a unique, originally interesting and highly intriguing read for me that I couldn’t seemed to put it down as throughout my entire read it kept me on my toes. So, overall I really loved it.

Having loved Babel, I was excited to read another RF Kuang novel. This was not what I expected.

While Yellowface provides an interesting moral dilemma - author dies, friend steals her first draft manuscript and passes it off as her own - and it was undeniably readable, I struggled with the book. It felt overly preachy at times and honestly made me cringe a bit reading it as the main character was just too horrible. From about 5% in, it was blatantly obvious that she was hurtling towards *something* awful, though I truly didn't expect (or enjoy) the final twist.

It wasn't a wholly negative reading experience, and it would make a good book club choice for discussion but I expected to enjoy myself more than I did.

The fast paced nature of this book had me enraptured from the first chapter, I absolutely devoured this book in about 6 hours and I think I may explode.

The character voice felt believable while reading the book, I could feel the panic, the feelings of disgust and entitlement that the character felt.

The characters were very well written, you’re not meant to like them (and I can assure you, you won’t), but the writing draws you in and somehow you’re 3 hours into a reading stint and you’ve forgotten to stop for lunch. Suffice to say, addictive.

I had so many eye roll moments when watching Juniper essentially set the stage for her own downfall, it was really hard to feel bad for her considering how she tarnished Athena’s memory and white washed her work.

I liked that the book highlighted the need for more POC in the book industry and the lack of support for debut authors.

Having seen booktwt in action, this is an entirely accurate portrayal of how things can go down once an accusation is made (although in this case it was 1000% true).

This review is more my mismatched thoughts whilst reading, but in summary- great book, read it.

I flew through this book in less than two days. I found it impossible to put down. This book will mean different things to different people, and for me, it was the juiciest amalgamation of every awful bit of Book Twitter discourse and navel-gazing essay on the craft and ethics of writing. Yes, some of the pop culture references will be dated very quickly, but the sharp, angry observations about the worst tendencies of creative people desperate for validation will probably (and sadly) never will. Highly recommend this one. My eternal gratitude to the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me to read this so far in advance!

This is a very interesting and intriguing read. Which I think anyone who wants to be an author or anyone who just loves reading should read. Because it is a very well written eye opener of a read.

As a newbie author whose eyes are opening to the realities of this industry, this book was brilliant! I think it should be compulsory reading for debut authors! I liked how informative and 'bare-all' it was without apology, and how it explored real issues within the industry but in a compelling and satiric way. At times I think it read like a non-fiction book, which didn't bother me at all as I am absorbing all the information I can, but I did question how non-writers would relate to it.

R. F. Kuang is probably one of my favorite authors. The Poppy War is my top favorite fantasy series and in my opinion, Babel has redefined what is dark academia. When I found out she was releasing another book, this time in the genre of literary fiction, I was naturally excited. I was even more excited that I was able to get an advanced copy of it.

But unfortunately, Yellowface has failed to impress. RFK's personal voice shines through in the writing, and if you're familiar with her background, you can definitely see her (valid!) frustrations and how she's folded it into the book. Borrowing what another reviewer said, parts of the book just felt like a very long rant. Another thing I noticed is that some of the events just seem to be repetitive — especially the book twitter drama. Another thing I didn't like was the multitude of pop culture references, which may just probably be a personal thing for me. The ending and the events leading to it, I felt, could have been a lot stronger than that. It was good and vindicating in some way, but also felt rushed.

There are positives — RFK still has her usual way with prose that it's quick to read and engaging. She's successful in creating a very easy to hate character in June. I disliked her so much that I thought about just giving up on the book entirely, a testament on how strong RFK can be when it comes to characterization.

I liked the book's themes about publishing and its treatment of BIPOC authors. RFK has certainly hit the mark on that and she managed to share the message she wanted to get across, although it sometimes felt clumsily blunt.

I reviewed a very early copy of the book though, so perhaps once it's released a lot of the things I've pointed out have been rectified. Still, while this is my least favorite RFK book so far, I am still eagerly looking forward to whatever she comes up with next.

The premise of this book is fascinating and I was really looking forward to reading it but unfortunately it's execution fell a bit flat for me. While there are some interesting moments exploring the thought processes of June/Juniper and the issue of diversity in the arts/cultural appropriation are undoubtedly important to address, overall I was left a bit bored, with little interest/investment in any of the characters (as villains or otherwise). Not a terrible read, just a bit meh which is a shame when there is so much promise in the concept.
Thanks to NetGalley.co.uk and HarperCollins UK for the free eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Advanced review copy provided by Netgalley for an independent, honest review
A twisted character study that will hold a mirror up to your own moral grey. Excellent at zeroing in on the publishing industry, ego, and the desire for fame in the age of BookTok. No one is likeable... but that's the entire point.

I sat for an entire 24 hours after I read this book and had the initial impression that I hated it. It actually made me angry! Speaking as someone who has a similar background to the character of Athena Liu (Chinese ethnicity, Western education) it almost felt too close to home. Then I sat at my dining table with my sister and we spoke about the book for a whole half hour. It dawned on me then that this novel was actually astonishingly clever... it made me feel, it was pretty unforgettable, and it was entirely effective at making me feel deeply uncomfortable.

Even writing this review puts me in an uneasy mood: the book speaks about Goodreads, ARCs, the ruthless publicity lifecycle of middling authors and rising star ingenues. It was also a self-aware commentary of wokeness and cultural appropriation that I will think about for a long time.

Kuang's just flexing right now. I've not read Babel yet but considering the complete 180 this book was from her Poppy War series, I think she's just getting started when it comes to surprising her readers. This book was a wink, a nudge, a shove... and if we're going to hell with her as readers what a hell it would be.

Can I just say that this confessional-style satirical novel was wildly entertaining?? I enjoyed this so much!! I filed it under ‘Lit with Teeth’ because there is so much bite. The story is told from the perspective of the villain, June Hayward, a struggling white writer who has an intense love-hate relationship with Athena Liu, her much-more-successful Chinese-American friend. One day, Athena dies while they are alone, leaving behind her manuscript. From that moment on, June begins a series of thefts in a bid to rise to Athena’s level.

June has been insanely jealous and resentful of Athena for being more desirable and successful than her. They may be friends on the outside but in her mind, June hates how Athena became the darling of the publishing world through “unfair” means. This means that Athena was diverse (read: not white) enough to “cheat” her way into success by selling Asian struggles, all the while poor little June was dismissed and ignored for being yet another dime-a-dozen white woman writing about her meh childhood.

At first chance, June rebrands herself as Juniper Song, banking on the ambiguity of her middle name to pass off as potentially mixed. She butchers Athena’s manuscript on the plight of Chinese labourers in WW1, making sure to whitewash it to ensure a greater reach. She is met with instant success, gets drunk on it, and spends the next few years trying to get another hit. June becomes obsessed with her public image and obsessively tries to eliminate her haters, afraid that someone will see through her ploys. Her subsequent days are filled with fear, writer’s block, and damage control. She provokes the ire of some Asian-American critics who find her very sus and disapprove of her writing about a culture that is not her heritage.

As a writer, June is completely barren if left to her own devices. Her life is just too bland and uneventful, and even her debut novel on her childhood was a total flop. Like a vampire that must feed to live, June needs Athena to maintain her literary career. She accuses publishers and readers of reverse racism and in the same breath, consciously uses her white privilege to crush her detractors. Our delusional protagonist wheedles and begs for our understanding and forgiveness for having all these nasty thoughts, justifying herself constantly. At some points, she does succeed in victimising herself, particularly when it is revealed that Athena had a tendency to “steal” others’ horrible experiences to turn into fodder for her bestsellers, like a vulture preying on the injured.

I guess one can argue that Athena was simply inspired by true events, but it doesn’t change the fact that she conveniently and cleverly chose stories with enough shock value and novelty to help her make bank. June also questions whether Athena even has the right to speak of the Chinese struggle on behalf of her whole race, given her extremely privileged upbringing. Did Athena play the race card? Did she exploit her marginality to self-orientalise and get undeserved accolades? These are valid points, but to June, outright plagiarism seems to be a totally acceptable way to get even. Athena is far from perfect, yes, but what June does is undeniably yellowface, and utterly remorseless yellowface at that.

I found the metaphor of the 僵尸 (Chinese zombie) particularly apt as June repeatedly reanimates Athena from beyond the grave to continue capitalising and feeding off her. June’s necromantic post-mortem consumption and regurgitation of Athena grows more and more grotesque in form, starting from Athena’s high-profile death, to Athena’s manuscript, then Athena’s short story, and finally even stretching to include her own personal memories of Athena in a tell-all memoir. For as long as it is possible, June will continue to cannibalise on and exploit Athena in any and every way for profit while centring her white self. She becomes a druggie, hooked on the highs of publishing fame. However, like a bad spell that rebounds on its caster, June’s actions eat at her from the inside out until she becomes something of a zombie herself.

Overall, this was truly a riveting read. The depictions of how the industry works were realistic, almost painfully so. No one in the book industry is exempt from Kuang’s sting, even the reader (think passionate goodreads reviewers, cringey booktokers, and inflammatory booktubers). Very, very, funny and definitely a masterpiece in my books :-)

rating : ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

thank you to netgalley and harpercollins uk for providing me with an e-arc for yellowface by R.F. Kuang !

yellowface is R.F. Kuang's literary fiction debut, a satire on the book industry that offers a significant perspective on their portrayal of diversity and racial sensitivity.

this book is so incredibly relevant to the current events within the book community, specifically surrounding the lack of sensitivity towards potentially racist content. while the significant interest surrounding diversity has always been portrayed to be solely positive, yellowface rather delves into how this can rather place limitations upon diverse authors - Rebecca discusses this issue in a lecture you can find on youtube ! this really steers away from the idealisation of blindly focusing on an author's 'diverseness', and creates a valuable opportunity for people to further educate themselves.

after watching a great number of R.F. Kuang's interviews, i also noticed there were many scenes she drew from personal experience, which made the book feel a lot more real and confronting. it's told from june's point of view, who makes many, MANY repulsive decisions that left me thinking, 'are you kidding me right now?' - and though i have seen many reviewers comment on the overexaggeration of her character, i personally believed it to be quite realistic majority of the time, as a POC reviewer myself.

through this one book alone, i gained a significant amount of knowledge surrounding the publishing industry, and i would most definitely recommend this to anyone who is interested in the community.

god this book is ridiculously good. a blunt satire of the current culture in publishing that feels like a 300 page subtweet; rfk continues to be a genius

3.4
Sometimes enjoyable, sometimes boring. But I thought the last part was really interesting.

It was very hard, at first, to separate R. F. Kuang's voice from the narrator. I might not know her personally and this might be my first book by her but I am very familiar with her "online persona" from numerous interviews and panels and yes, her tweets. Fortunately, it fades over the course of the book.

This was enjoyable!