In Yellowface by Rebecca F. Kuang, struggling author June Hayward has been friends with darling of the literary world, Athena Liu, since college. When Athena dies suddenly, June takes the typewritten manuscript of Athena’s draft novel ‘The Last Front’ about the Chinese Labor Corps during the First World War and publishes it under her own name, rebranding as Juniper Song. However, her attempts to justify the theft soon start to spiral out of control. It’s easy to see why ‘Yellowface’ has become one of the buzziest debut novels of the year. Kuang’s contemporary satire of how the publishing industry, social media, cultural appropriation and cancel culture intersect has some incredibly over-the-top twists but is nevertheless hugely enjoyable and sharply written, with June’s unreliable first-person perspective adding further layers of complexity. Aged 26, Kuang’s previous books include a fantasy trilogy and the dark academia novel ‘Babel’. Intriguingly, she has said in interviews that she never wants to write a project in the same genre twice, so her career path will definitely be one to watch. Many thanks to Harper Collins UK for sending me a review copy via NetGalley.

outside of my usual sphere of trashy, easy to read thrillers I was intrigued to see what all the hype was about and soon found myself totally absorbed, ignoring my daughter and engrossed in just when the tables would (maybe) turn and June would get found out for swiping Anthea's masterpiece. Furthermore, if she does get rumbled, who will it be to guess what's happened, especially as June doesn't keep anyone, bar Anthea, close. Could it be the ghost of Anthea, or is that simply guilt presenting itself in a new guise?

Yellowface deals with all too familiar everyday feelings of jealousy, not being good enough and the brutal world of publishing and making a name for yourself. It also deals with a world where isolation and feeling constantly lonely is the new normal.

There's a sense of unease throughout the whole book where you just don't know if or when June may be caught out and what disastrous repercussions this might have for her and her writing career - can she really get away with stealing a piece of work that is so unlike her own, given that her own debut was such a flop? A real page turner that keeps you reading until the very last sentence

I wanted to love this book, I had seen so much hype yet sadly didn't get a chance to read it till after publication hence the late review!
Babel was one of my favourite books last year and I was looking forward to more of the same detailed, gripping writing that absorbed me into a world .. and I was excited to see a peek behind the publishing world curtain .. yet it fell short for me and although I enjoyed it I found some bits a bit frustrating to read and despite my usual love of unlikable characters .. June was just too unlikeable.
The book is well written, of course, Kuang is an amazing writer, and I know some people will absolutely adore this satirical insight into the world of publishing, writing and stolen work .. but this one wasn't for me ..

Absolutely loved it, have recommended left right and centre in the bookshops, smart story, great voice and a book ever writer and wannabe will devour in a sitting.

I may not have grasped the full significance and profound message of this book, but I had different expectations because of its online hype. I found the chance to acquire insights into the publishing industry and an author's life informative and enjoyable. However, I felt the novel was overly prolonged.

This book is a superb choice for book clubs, as it raises important questions about plagiarism and the ethics of using a deceased author's work. The character of June is intricate, and while I found her story interesting, I did not feel a strong emotional connection to her.

In general, it's not a complete failure, but it doesn't quite live up to its online reputation according to my personal preferences.

This book is worth all the hype and praise it is receiving. It's multifaceted, nuanced, scarily accurate and above all else a thoroughly enjoyable romp of a book. I'm not clever enough to tell you why this book is so clever, but know that it is. It shines a very dubious light on the publishing industry, along with discussions on race, cancel culture and a myriad of other topics. It's fantastically observed and described and full of razor sharp wit. I loved to hate June and I was obsessed with following all the ups and downs of her career. A wonderful, wonderful book.

A thought provoking, yet thoroughly entertaining book.

When Athena Liu (an Asian-American, best selling author) dies suddenly, her friend (and failed author) June Hayward steals the manuscript Athena was working on. From here, a tense, darkly satirical novel follows.

Throughout the novel we are confronted with harsh truths about and the racial injustice within the publishing industry.

Despite this book dealing with many heavy topics, Kuang’s writing makes the book very accessible. It is easy to become engrossed in the story and to be entertained by the storyline whilst simultaneously contemplating the injustices that exist within our world.

I recieved an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Yellowface 100% lived up to the hype for me. The only other Kuang work I'm familliar with is Babel, and since I know that The Poppy War is also fantasy, I was curious about how her voice would translate to a contemporary thriller. Kuang absolutely kills it- if I hadn't known this was by her, I would've never guessed (well, maybe the preoccupation with translation would've tipped me off, but I think I would've assumed it was merely a nod instead.) Yellowface was absolutely what I'd call compulsively readable- I was glued to it, staying up far too late to read, finishing it under 48 hours- all of that stuff. I've seen people mention having to take breaks from June's narrative voice, and I can understand that- for me, though, this was a car crash I couldn't tear my eyes away from, and I loved every second.

I can't get over June as a protagonist- she's deplorable, obviously, but I think Kuang did a fantastic job at making her, for lack of a better phrase, believably delusional. If you take June's actions out of contexts, they beggar belief: how could anyone do such a thing to someone they still call a friend? Kuang shows you the insidious rationalistion in such a compelling way, you can absolutely see how our protagonist got herself into this situation, and is still convinced she isn't the bad guy, and even feel for her, despite how absolutely awful everything she's doing is. And she's still a person, and the narrative doesn't let you forget it, which is fantastic. Because it's people who do these sorts of things in real life, too.

Like Babel, Yellowface is thematically rich- some themes are directly confronted and some are explored in a subtler fashion. I personally deeply enjoyed the exploration of the line between inspiration and theft, particularly on Athena's part, as the foil to June, here. I think I could read and reread this and get more out of it each and every time.

I could probably wax poetic about this book forever, but others have said it better, and you could be reading a long review for me, or you could be reading Yellowface, and I promise the latter is much, much better. So: Just go read Yellowface.

I loved this book! This is my first book by Rebecca and totally convinced to read the rest. It was smart, funny and felt very of the moment without being corny.

Loved it!! Rebecca is always so brilliant at getting inside her characters heads, and Yellowface really proved that! This is not only an excellent, pacy literary thriller, but also a sharp critique of the publishing industry and systemic racism. I did get the impression that this is very much for the publishing girlies though, and I wonder how much you'd get from it if you aren't involved in the bookish world in someway, and weren't aware of all the publishing tea.

June Hayward is a failed author: her debut novel resolutely failed to set the literary world alight and she now pays her bills ghostwriting college admissions essays and tutoring Ivy League wannabes. Meanwhile, her Yale contemporary Athena Liu is publishing's darling of the moment, recipient of awards, rave reviews and six-figure advances. In June's eyes, the only reason why Athena is lauded while she is ignored is that Athena is Asian and June is white, so when Athena dies unexpectedly, leaving June with access to her last, unfinished, manuscript, June quickly convinces herself that this is her opportunity to get the adulation and critical acclaim she believes has been unfairly held out of her reach.

Yellowface is a biting, unashamedly meta, satire of the fickle, exploitative, and somewhat arbitrary nature of the publishing industry and its treatment of POC stories.

The novel asks several important questions, such as whether it's more important to be successful than authentic, and whether who tells stories is just as important as whether they are told at all.

It is a direct response to the heated dialogue around novels such as American Dirt and The Help, both referenced in the text, and the own voices movement, which highlights the importance of centring POC voices, rather than fawning over white authors who make a profit from telling stories they are arguably not qualified to tell, often at the expense of authors who do have the relevant cultural background but are perceived as less marketable. Many of the criticisms of the novel June passes off as her own original work are taken directly from comments people have made about the aforementioned novels, and R. F. Kuang does a brilliant job of making June seem self-righteous and oblivious in exactly the way the reader might imagine this type of author to be - at one point she insists that her version of The Last Front is better than Athena's would have been because it is universally relatable and not alienating to non-Asian readers. She is not just complicit, but enthusiastic, about whitewashing Athena's unfinished story in the name of accessibility and inclusion - that is to say, making it more palatable to a white audience. 'Writing is the closest thing we have to real magic,' muses June at one point. 'Writing is creating something out of nothing, is opening doors to other lands.' But what if you don't have the right to open those doors? I hope that those defenders of what one of June's critics calls 'historical exploitation novels', read this work and reconsider their stance.

June is a talented story teller, able to take any truth and distort it to fit her preferred narrative - one which diminishes her crimes. She is an utterly unlikeable narrator, and her brazen lack of self-awareness had me cringing with secondhand embarrassment.

Yellowface is a compelling peek behind the curtain of the contemporary American publishing world and, for a reviewer, an illuminating look into the psyche of an author. When reading or reviewing a book, it is easy to reduce the author to a faceless, anonymous entity - to separate them from their work entirely - and, though June is essentially the worst, it still made me pause to consider how much of themselves an author puts into their work, and how difficult it must be not to internalise criticism of it (though June does an astonishing job of justifying any wrongdoing on her part and finding ways to dismiss anyone who calls her out.)

It was fascinating to consider how authors - and the teams behind them - can craft an artificial persona in order to market a book; we see this with both June and Athena, whom June insists is just as morally reprehensible as her, if not more so. Because of the unreliable narrator device, it was unclear what the reader is actually supposed to think of Athena's character, though this may have been the author's design, causing us to question how much of anything June tells us is the truth and how much is part of her need to control the narrative.

I found Yellowface to be compulsively readable, yet I felt there were parts towards the end where the pace stalled and it seemed as though the author wasn't sure how to wrap up the story in a satisfying way. However, the rest of the novel is so deliberately crafted that I'm willing to assume that this was a conscious choice to reflect June's own situation at that point in the story. The ending itself is a perfectly maddening conclusion which reflects June's hubris aptly.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Collins UK for the opportunity to read and review an ARC of this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher Harper/William Morrow for the digital ARC, it has not affected my honest review.

"Yellowface" is an incredible satire from one of my favourite authors, R.F. Kuang, that makes an important study into the dark side of publishing, white privilege, racism and stealing from the dead. June Hayward thought that she was destined for greatness as an author, just like her friend Athena Liu. Athena is brilliant and a bestseller, having written incredible fiction for years from a young age; now she's got a deal with Netflix. June, on the other hand, is bitter because her debut performed terribly and now she can't even get a paperback release. She's chronically jealous of Athena, blaming her for all the misfortunes in her career because June is white, but everything changes when June is invited back to Athena's apartment for drinks. Athena has a freak accident and dies while she's there; June's response is to steal Athena's freshly written first draft of her masterpiece about Chinese labourers in World War I. She doesn't think what she's done is theft, more justice for the things she'd lost over the years. June changes the book and sends it to her publisher, where she becomes an instant hit. As her career soars, June changes her name to Juniper Song in order to sound more Asian, but she soon finds that she can't escape Athena's legacy or her writing. After evidence appears online that June plagiarised the entire book, and the fickle world of publishing turns on her, she races to defend herself- even if it means destroying the legacy she apparently sought to protect while also trying to protect the career she feels she is entitled to.

This is a sharp witted, dark study of the world of publishing with a character who is genuinely one of the most unlikeable I've ever seen in a novel. I raced through this book, gripped by it the same way that I was with Kuang's "The Poppy War" and "Babel". Throughout the book, through all her justifications and lies, you find yourself wanting nothing more than for June to fall. The way she appropriated from Athena, and the way that Athena in turn took from other people's experiences and trauma, is a dark exploration of writing and just how isolating it can be. This is the definition of a morally grey book and I'm so glad I read it, even if it's completely outside of my usual genre. I'll read anything R.F. Kuang writes, no matter the subject, and I can't wait to see what she might write next.

Firstly thank you to NetGalley, HarperCollins and Rebecca F Kuang for the opportunity to read this ARC in return for an honest review.

This book to me is either pure brilliance or the most backward book going and I just cannot decide. Let me explain, having read Babel, I found it interesting, captivating but so full of references and language not explained that it left me feeling like the author wanted to prove a level of intelligence and show all the research she had completed by almost turning it into a reference book and not a work of fiction. Yellowface however felt initially like it was written by a completely different author. It was so dissimilar to that of her previous work I even commented this to my better half (not that he knew what I was talking about). Then upon reading further, I find that my first thoughts were the actual premise of the book, that Junie has rewritten and published Athena’s work - a piece of work which by the first author was so full of research to show due diligence and Chinese to impress a level of superiority and intelligence. Coincidence or a very carefully planned and creative way to fully allow the reader to immerse themself in a story. Potentially the latter, although I am still really unsure, and the plot thickens still. As the crux of the issues raised, the criticisms and the stereotypes we see Athena experience are based in truth and a representation of what R F Kuang herself has experienced. Does she therefore see herself as Athena, intelligent and wildly successful - a little arrogant perhaps? Or creative using her own experience to make the story come alive more?

Now for some of the content itself, at one point, whilst Junie types her final story, she is unsure where to go or how to end it. For me, the ending presented in Yellowface appears to be the same. For Junie the story just ends, in an insignificant and uneventful way. Exactly the same feeling as I had finishing this. It was so underwhelming I was left wondering why I had read the story. Again, is this a creative way to finish a story it’s unclear how to finish, by saying in the story itself that there is no easy way to finish it. It sets the reader up for just that.

Maybe I am just thinking far too critically into this. Either way, I have still gone with four stars (one removed for the ending). For me, despite the comparisons to reality and the uncertainty of either the geniousness or conceited Ed’s of the author it was a thought provoked and I’m pleased I have read this.

I read this in one day and honestly I’m kind of speechless?

As a blogger, many of the issues seen in Yellowface (bar the dramatic thieving of someone else’s work) are things that I’m sure almost every fellow blogger has been aware of in the industry over the years. To see it all laid out bare, albeit satirically, is quite bizarre and really eye opening.

This was an entertaining yet frustrating read, as I’m sure it was meant to be. It was thought provoking and it’ll stick with me for a while!

Absolutely worth the hype. This is a searing look at the publishing industry,. social media, cultural appropriation and more. It's very obvious and there's absolutely no subtlety here, but I surprisingly didn't mind that as it just goes for the jugular and doesn't let up. Definitely worth picking up!

Yellowface by Rebecca F Kuang is possibly the most delicious book I have read this year.

It is the story of June and Athena - friends, colleagues and rivals. On the night that Athena dies, June does the unthinkable and steals Athena's unpublished manuscript. What happens next is a whirlwind of situations that make you think about what you would do if you were presented with the golden opportunity - the opportunity to pass someone else's work off as your own.

June is the perfect antihero. While you know this is never going to end well for her you kind of want to see what she will do next. How low she will stoop. She is so likeable and presents her arguments in a way that has you agreeing with her actions no matter how wrong you know they are.

I know that I will be thinking about Yellowface for a long time to come.

Yellowface by Rebecca F Huang is available now.

For more information regarding Rebecca F Huang (@kuangrf) please visit her Twitter page.

For more information regarding Harper Collins (@HarperCollinsUK) please visit their Twitter page.

This was an enjoyable read for me. This book was well written and for a first time writing in fiction, you wouldn’t have known it. The book flowed perfectly and showed the darker side to publishing after June stole Athena’s manuscript after she died.
The book explored plenty of topics such as racism and felt at times that it was very thought provoking. I felt that characters were well written and with plenty of depth to them. Whilst I don’t typically read a lot from this genre it was a great read.

Thank you to the Author, Netgalley and the Publisher for an eARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I couldn't stop myself continuing with this story despite the very real dislike of the main character Juniper; completely gripping! An entire story told from the perspective of a very deep and real narcissist was often difficult but often intriguing and I just HD to know how far she would go with her lie. I have to admit the inner struggle that Kuang has managed to portray is brilliant, I found myself sympathetic even! Weaving in a cut-throat publishing industry, cancel culture and the sheer obsession we have either social media makes Yellowface an incredibly interesting read that will stay with me for a long while yet.

I don't know how to start. I finished this book in less than 24 hours. The main character was so unlikable and that normally puts me off finishing a book, but in this case, the plot was way too interesting for me to stop. The book raises questions about how the publishing industry (and any industry tbh) treats people from a BAME background. I just wish the writing would have given me a bit of space to actually think through this myself instead of telling me what to think. Also there were too many real life references (like Harry Styles and famous authors) that threw me off a bit. Other than that, the plot was fast paced and didn't stagnate at any point.

Stop what you’re doing and get your hands on this! I inhaled this: it’s witty, smart and of course a very humorous, satirical and scathing look at the publishing industry. Was hooked from the first page and I’m confident many others will be too…