Author: R.F. Kuang
# of Pages: 329 (ebook)
Genre: Adult, Contemporary, Mystery
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Synopsis: Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars. But Athena’s a literary darling. June Hayward is literally nobody. Who wants stories about basic white girls, June thinks. So when June witnesses Athena’s death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse: she steals Athena’s just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers during World War I. So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? Doesn’t this piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller? That’s what June claims, and the New York Times bestseller list seems to agree. But June can’t get away from Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens to bring June’s (stolen) success down around her. As June races to protect her secret, she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.
Review: Yellowface is a fictional book by an Asian author about a white character who is an author that catfishes people into thinking she's an Asian author.
Told in first person, this book's main character June Hayward is an unreliable narrator and someone who you're meant to hate. While this is definitely intentional, most of my thoughts while reading Yellowface were about how much I strongly dislike June.
The book was interesting enough as June digs herself further into a hole, but it didn't have the gripping suspense that I would expect from a mystery novel. It also felt like not ENOUGH happened in this book. Despite it not being very long, it felt like the story was dragging a bit and by the end it still felt like I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. This is why I decided to rate Yellowface at 3 stars rather than 4 stars.
I also found it amusing that this was a book about an author navigating the publication industry. It's great when authors write about what they know, but this felt like TOO obvious of a choice. That being said, I learned a lot more about an author's experience in getting a book published.
I would still recommend the book to people who are already interested in it as it's pretty easy to read.
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