Thank you Harper Collins UK and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for honest review!
Yellowface was a book that pulled me in from the first page and I couldn’t stop thinking about until the very last. And then for a few more days. It was also my first read of Kuang’s books, and I’m very excited to see how different style the rest will be, and after looking at other reviews I think this might be why I liked the book so much.
I see a lot of comments how this book is basically twitter drama and they could as well open their TL, but… isn’t that the point? Yellowface feels fresh, feels on time, feels real. This book isn’t for everyone, because not everyone will like how deep into industry and everyday-writer issues it reaches, but I loved all the details of it. The characters might not be going through some deep changes or complicated arcs, but it just brings them closer to reality.
From the first chapter I knew that this will be one of my new favourites and as soon as it comes out, it will have to land on my shelf.

Was really excited to read this because I'd seen some fantastic early reviews. I also love books set in the publishing world as I have friends working in Publishing so always think it gives me a different perspective and things to quiz them on if it's really like that.

I raced through this book finishing it in a day, it was just so addictive to know what's going to happen next! I loved and hated the characters and thought that was so cleverly done.

Another reason I adored this book was because it reminded me so much of Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne who is one of my all time favorite authors! Adored it.

This book has a very interesting premise and was a quick read. There were no likeable characters and the character arcs were very flat but I felt that lent itself to the storytelling. This was quite an uncomfortable read highlighting issues with tokenism in the publishing industry and the lengths people will go to to try and convince themselves and others their poor actions are acceptable. I didn’t mind the mid section being mostly repetitive twitter discourse, I think it was necessary to highlight the cyclical nature of internet drama that snowballs from one small action but inevitably doesn’t change the root problem. Overall I enjoyed this book and look forward to reading more of RFK’s work.

'Yellowface' is a scathing look at the publishing industry, and how easily art can be commodified and misused. The plot follows Juniper Song, as she publishes- and faces the consequences of- her dead "friend's" book.

Overall, I really enjoyed the novel- it was gripping and hooking. I read the whole thing in a single sitting. There's no doubt that the book is engaging, and RFK's discussions of race, rights and representation shines through, as it does in most of her novels.

However, I do feel that the writing style is extremely different from what I expect of this author (which is likely due to the change in genre). The style is by no means bad, but I would argue the writing style here lacks the originality that characterises most of RFK's work. I also think some of the structure is jarring, but that's likely due to the fact I've read a fairly early ARC.

Despite my qualms with these aspects, I overall thoroughly enjoyed reading it (and certainly found it much quicker to get through than her other novels). The characterisation for main characters is strong and I feel her characters as a whole serve as vessels for the message she intends them to. The plot is hooking, and her social commentary largely convincing. A very good read!

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.