This. Fk'in. Book.

Katherine Min was a writer of rare talent and this posthumous release makes for essential and poignant reading.

The fetishisation of Asian women(and men) by the Western world has created massively unbalanced power dynamics that are often dangerous and toxic. The Fetishist follows Daniel as he unwillingly embarks on a path of absolution for his past mistakes and the lives destroyed by his hedonistic ways.

Whilst the meat of the story is focused on power dynamics, the fetishisation of minorities and repentance the story also deftly handles grief, disabilities and the loss of self.

This book is hard to read, but it's a rewarding and at times addicting story about the dangers and ripple effects of selfishness.

Pleased to say that I enjoyed this offbeat novel and found it compulsively readable.

Min has written a confronting and unique story about a young woman trying to get revenge on the man that she believes drove her mother to commit suicide. The writing delves into the lives of several characters, and explores themes of fetishism (obviously) and chronic illness.

I appreciated the way the author kept the momentum of the story line by jumping between different characters and places in time, but would have appreciated more time spent with some of the characters that were explored less than others.

Initially I was confused by the route that the story took, and then was pleasantly surprised when I remembered the Author's Note that is included at the beginning. Min’s introduction (alongside those last two excellent chapters of the novel) changes the entire narrative and meaning of the events, as she warns that the story is a fairytale of sorts, and that every story has a happy ending depending on where you put the ending. I won't say anything else - in order to avoid the risk of spoilers - but the author's sometimes scathing wit, as well as her excellent framing of the narrative, really made for a unique novel that kept me thinking about it long after reading it.

This will be a fun one to recommend to a lot of my customers.

An intense read about obsession, this story kept me gripped from beginning to end, the characters and their motivations were convoluted and complex, and the whole book was a wild ride. The relationships between Kyoko, Daniel and Alma are explored over time, and the novel is funny, sad, challenging and touching throughout, although the ending is a little unbelievable.
Altogether this is a work of love and an honour to read a finished book after the author's death.

Beautiful writing and technically adept, but the story lost momentum for me. Didn't find the ARC of the male main character believable, and cringed at some elements, but overall enjoyed the experience. Felt very original, and the writing about music is wonderful

Sad to say that this book was a disappointment as the blurb was very intriguing. The writing is slightly clumsy and the timeline jumping around is a bit confusing. I wasn't rooting for any character at all. Wish it could be executed better. After all it's still good to have it published with Min's family's help after she sadly passed away.

Thank you netgalley for the advanced e-copy.

Expectations are always strange things. The very title, "The Fetishist", suggests a certain extremeness and intensity. The blurb talked of rain, rage, grief, and revenge. A punk singer seeking retribution gives a strong sense of anger and violence in a few simple words. And these things all exist in this book, but they are accents rather than the overall tone. For while this is a story about the harm love causes when it falls apart, it is also a celebration of love. As someone who came for the revenge story I found myself wondering why I was enjoying the love stories as much as I did. I should've felt cheated and deprived of that bleakness, but instead I found comfort in the warmth. The plots of love are well crafted. We explore the scars and brokenness of the characters through the various subplots. Books about revenge are supposed to have clear villains, often on both sides, but I found these characters sympathetic. Maybe not always pleasant, but they are human and relatable.

About three quarters of the way through I was struck by something very cliched. Not in the story, but my opinion of it. For all the classical music references throughout, there came a moment looking back on a trip to Italy where I realised the writing itself felt like a long classical piece of music. The way the different threads wove together, like the different sections of an orchestra rising and falling. The tempo adjusting smoothly between the emotions - peril giving way to nostalgia and back again. The back and forth that feels natural in a performance. I think that's when I stopped feeling puzzled why I was enjoying the story. It was that very flow that was keeping me engaged as much as anything else. But then, right at the end, I think it all just clocked. Those final pages gave me the conclusions I never knew I wanted - those storylines I'd become invested in tied themselves up nicely. No loose ends. No "what if"s despite plenty of unwritten future. I felt sated. My satisfaction with the whole thing just lifted as it all drew to a close.

This was an enjoyable read about fetishisation and obsession, something you can tell was incredibly important to the author, and it is a story that well deserved finishing following her sad death.

The characters in this are so whole and complete that you feel like they exist in the world around you - whether for better or worse, and I loved the way that music is included throughout.

I’d like to start by saying that this book is clearly a labour of love and pain. The author, Katherine Min, died before she was able to finish the book. After her death, her daughter, Kayla finished the novel and had it published posthumously.

This is also your reminder to always seek out own voices reviews because those are the voices and opinions that truly matter and reflect literary representation. A quick search of the hashtag will bring up a few for you.

‘The Fetishist’ follows three main characters, interconnected by themes and commentaries on race, visibility and reflections on an immoral past. The main theme of the book is the exploration of the fetishisation of the Asian women, referred to as “yellow fever” throughout the novel.

This book is another stellar example of why diverse reading is so vital. The representation and commentary on the fetishisation of Asian women within these pages is something I will never have lived experience of. This book brought the reality to the forefront of my mind and left me feeling righteously infuriated.

Though there are humorous moments, overall this is a tough and rage-inducing read, which I believe is exactly the point. The amount of times that I felt homicidal towards one of the characters was no joke.

My brain did struggle with the structure of the book as I felt it jumped around a little too much, without warning. This was easy enough to work out but some context of where we were in the timeline could have been helpful.

The style, the slow pacing and the ending were not for me but I do feel this is an important book and I am very grateful to Katherine and Kayla for sharing it with the world.

As always, be sure to check content warnings, I have added general warnings to my StoryGraph review. I’d particularly caution people who have any trauma/triggers around Asian fetishisation/racism, as this book could be very triggering.

A note for my fellow disabled humans and everyone generally, the word ‘invalid’ is used in passing by one of the characters in the chapter titled: ‘Alma, in Cyberspace’. Though this is not used as an insult, the outdated language did trigger me a little, so just wanted to give you a heads-up.

Thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown Book Group UK for the e-arc. All opinions are my own.

I have to say that I struggled to read this book. It felt quite disjointed and left me a little lost in places. Possibly since it was finished posthumously by her daughter. The overly wordy language also left me a little unimmersed in the storyline. The characters are what pulled me through, Daniel and Kyoko especially. I did love how the author used music as the string that held the entire book together,

No star rating
Unfortunately, I did have to DNF this book. I found its pacing tedious and nonsensical, and the writing style felt awfully clunky to me. This book was obscure, but not in the way that I favor. I would still recommend this book if you're interested, because I do think the issues I had with this book are very personal to my reading tastes.

The Fetishist is an electrifying page-turner that grips you and refuses to let go. The author crafts a riveting narrative that delves into the intricate layers of human desire and obsession. With each turn of the page, you're drawn deeper into the story, unable to tear yourself away from the raw emotion and unflinching exploration of taboo subjects. It's a book that challenges societal norms and the fascination and obsession on oriental women. I literally couldn't put it down!

This is a lovely - if disjointed - book, finished by the author's daughter after the author's untimely death from breast cancer. You can tell that it was finished posthumously, especially as the plot drags and sags in the middle. Despite its fantastic opening scene, it becomes a story that is too bogged down in language at the expense of plot. However, where it shines, it gleams. I loved its description of music - its importance to the characters and the way they lose themselves in it. I loved the juxtaposition between the classical and the punk and how at times, the two merged and meshed together. It is especially strong in how it looks at the fetishization of Asian women, especially by the character of Daniel who comes across as being immensely pathetic and more than deserving of all the bad things that happen to him.

The ending is a little bit too happily ever after for my liking, and thing fall together a little too neatly to be believable. But it's an enjoyable story and it's sad to know it's the last one that Katherine Min ever wrote. I would have loved to read more of her thoughts on music, art and its importance in our lives.

I really loved this one. Sometimes when I love a book, I tend to just completely fan girl over it and struggle to articulate my feelings. This is also a unique read, I’ve not read something that I found so different in a long time.

It was a moving read that will stay with me for a while. I also loved the pacing of the book and the musical element too. Overall, a great read that I thoroughly recommend.

Published posthumously, this is an provocative, funny literary thriller which along the way skewers, with black humour, the fetishization of Asian women. Set in the beautifully described world of classical musicians, it features a grieving daughter and her attempted revenge on the hapless man she believes caused the death of her mother. Needless to say nothing goes to plan. I will definitely be reading the author's back catalogue.

3.5 stars.
Well... this was a bit of a strange book. One that I am struggling to review. It contains, as the title suggests, a lot of themes surrounding fetishisation of Asian women. Also known quite crudely as "Yellow Fever". And contains three main characters. Kyoko is a young Japanese-American woman who is out to avenge her mother and the way she was treated by Daniel, violinist and a rather nasty man who bulldozes his way through life, taking what he wants and leaving a trail of destruction in his wake. The third character is Alma, a Korean-American cellist and the love of Daniel's life who is, when we first meet her, quite sick. It's a quite character driven book and these three characters stand up well in that respect.
What follows is quite hard to describe but having lived in Hong Kong for 4 years I am well versed in the mixed race coupling that does go on in Asia. Especially with the ex-pats that were there around the time of the handover. Although that really didn't prepare me for the warts and all that this book also doled out.
It's also quite an emotional book and does contain some rather heavy topics but there are also some lighter moments, a few quite laugh out loud funny too. It takes a wee while to really come together though, but when it does, it gives a great lightbulb moment. It's just all a bit messy until it gets there.
My final comment has to be on how neatly it all wrapped up at the end which was, satisfying but also, at the same time, didn't quite feel right. Felt a bit too neat to me.
My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

the prose feels slightly removed, omniscient. while i appreciated the issues explored within the story, i did find the finale rushed and i can't say i was ever immersed in the story.

enjoyed this unusual little book which is really the story of a number of different romantic relationships. In the majority of these relationships. The woman is of Asian origin, and the fetish of the title is the fact that one of the male characters of Caucasian origin deliberately, or subconsciously chooses repeatedly girlfriends of Asian origin
The story starts with a couple, kidnapping, an older man with the badly formed plan to take revenge on him for the way he treated a past girlfriend.
The story does tend to jump around in time quite a lot, which I can struggle with in books . we gradually discover how all the characters are linked ,the kidnapper, for example, blames the man she kidnapped for the death of her mother. For quite a lot of the story I didn’t quite understand how all the characters were linked and I found this a bit distracting. Once I had worked it out. the novel seem to make more sense to me.
The book is set in America and does have an American field to it however all the experiences are universal and it made sense to a British reader
Although I initially thought that this was primarily a relationship based novel, this story is more a collection of happening or experiences, and and the whole story is sold in a series of events . Personally, I would have enjoyed more deeper character development and I felt that this was somewhat lacking.
I liked authors writing style, it’s distinctive and enjoyable to read
It wasn’t until I read the acknowledgement that I realise that this book had been published posthumously by and completed by her daughter
I originally copy of the novel on NetGalley UK, the book is published on the 29th of February 2024 by little Brown book group UK.

This review will appear on NetGalley UK,Goodreads and my book blog bionicsarahsbooks.wordpress.com. After publication will also be on Amazon, UK.

I'd read some of the views on NetGalley before I picked this up, which put me in the mind that it might not be for me. I decided to read a chapter and see how I went. The fetishist succeeded in pulling me in after a few pages. I felt initial intrigue as to why some characters were seeking revenge, how they were all connected etc. I felt that the characters were fleshed out well and the story arc flowed at a good pace. I particularly enjoyed the different types of Asiaphiles there were, very entertaining!

My only disappointment was I felt the main caucasian male character was too bland to have had so much female interest, I just didn't get it!

The Fetishist weaves together the stories of three musicians, Kyoko, a young singer in a punk band; Daniel, the violin player she blames for her mother’s suicide and Alma, one-time cellist and the love of Daniel's life. After years of rage and grief over her mother's death, Kyoko sets out to kidnap and kill Daniel in retribution for her mother‘s death.
One of the things I love about reading is that it opens your mind and you learn about subject matter you never knew existed. In my case, I had never heard of the fetishism by white men of Asian women!

A really interesting and thought provoking read

Obsession, deception, jealousy, revenge... this story is full of it.
A beautifully written tale about the fetishes of a violin player and how his actions impact his life. The prose in the musical scenes was exquisite.
Slow-paced but a quality read with a great ending.

Thanks to NetGalley for a free e-copy in exchange for an honest review.