Book Review #150: Yellowface by Rebecca F. Kuang

 

Struggling author June Hayward has always been in the shadow of Athena Liu, her much more successful writer friend. So when Athena dies in a freak accident, and June happens to find her unfinished masterpiece, why shouldn't she publish it as her own? It's still helping Athena, right? And when the situation spirals out of control, shouldn't June do whatever it takes to protect her fake reputation?

It's been a while since I've written a book review! I was looking forward to reading this book so much, I'd heard great things about it and couldn't wait to get stuck in.

I liked this book. I knew the plot but I didn't really know what to expect.

The introduction was really great. Not only are we told a lot about Athena, but in the narration about Athena we also found out exactly what kind of person June is.

June is a great unlikeable protagonist. Everything she tries to justify makes us as the reader roll our eyes, but we can't stop reading because her voice is so compelling. And in particular her lack of self-awareness is so much fun. She's hilarious!

I really liked getting this insight into the publishing industry. It's a world that you don't really think about unless you're in it, or wanting to get into it, so I found it fascinating.

Kuang is a great writer, and does a good job of using pop culture references to make things feel more real - though I do worry about these things hurting the story in years to come when these references become outdated.

Some parts of the story feel a bit unrealistic, which could feed into June's unreliable perspective. There are points in the story where it feels like June is the main character of everyone's life, and as weird as it feels to the reader, it's so interesting seeing everything from inside June's head.

There were also some parts of the story that felt a bit jarring. Each chapter felt like it stood alone, there was no strong through-line to the narrative.

In addition, there was a lot of repetition in June's downward spiral - for example, social media users trying to expose June, then the drama dies down, and then social media posts reveal something else, then the drama dies down again.

But at the same time, these stops and starts did make the story feel realistic.

The ending left a lot to be desired, but at the same time, I would have no idea how to perfectly end a story like this.

So overall, while I didn't love every part of this story, I think it was really well written and told, and June is such a great protagonist! This is definitely worth a read!

4/5