| Author: | R.F. Kuang |
| Genre(s): | ➡️ Literary Fiction ➡️ Contemporary ➡️ Literary Thriller |
| Series? | ❎ No |
| Goodreads Rating: | ⭐ 3.85 (289.6k ratings; 41.3k reviews) |
| Personal Rating: | ⭐ 5 / 5 Overall |
🛑 Spoiler Warning 🛑
I might be recounting events, characters, and themes so THIS MIGHT BE FULL OF SPOILERS.
If you’d like to read a review with the spoilers hidden, kindly scroll to the bottom to read my spoiler-free review in the ‘Recommendations’ section or head to my Goodreads post. You don’t need an account to read it. 🙂
BLURB
Athena Liu is a literary darling and June Hayward is literally nobody.
White lies
When Athena dies in a freak accident, June steals her unpublished manuscript and publishes it as her own under the ambiguous name Juniper Song.
Dark humour
But as evidence threatens June’s stolen success, she will discover exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.
Deadly consequences…
What happens next is entirely everyone else’s fault.
With its totally immersive first-person voice, Yellowface grapples with questions of diversity, racism, and cultural appropriation, as well as the terrifying alienation of social media. R.F. Kuang’s novel is timely, razor-sharp, and eminently readable.
🌟Review (5/5) 🌟
This was a rollercoaster ride. It was written entirely from the protagonist’s point of view and it’s like witnessing a friend dig her own grave. While you don’t want to watch, you can’t look away either. I liked her, hated her, pitied her, and in the end, I don’t know what to feel about her. The only certain feeling remains is that she feels like a real freaking human being.
R.F. Kuang writes a compelling story of the ups and downs of a disturbingly flawed writer’s dream, the tenacious waters of the publishing industry, the digital world where everything is a minefield and the inevitable character destruction it costs you when you invest in it so heavily, the duplicity of people, and so many more modern topics relevant to this day. Seriously, there are ethical and moral dilemmas at every turn that you can take one and have a full-on discourse with anybody.
The well-crafted personalities and the very real-world problems each character face in this modern age made it a personally philosophical read. Sometimes an innocent passion twists into something else when you’ve thrown yourself into the game and this book made me think about that a lot.
“Readers inflict their own expectations, not just on the story, but on your politics, your philosophy, your stance on all things ethical. You, not your writing, become the product – your looks, your wit, your quippy clapbacks and factional alignments with online beefs that no one in the real world gives a shit about.”
— Chapter Nineteen, Yellowface
What’s interesting is that this is so real that when I read reviews of this book and the opinions on the social topics discussed here after reading it, it feels like a page out of Yellowface. Whether that opinion is positive or negative like a direct attack on the author, it’s all on point. It’s kind of darkly comedic. The open ending makes it all the more prophetic.
Recommendation
Pick Yellowface up as your next read if you’re intrigued to read from a modern villain’s perspective that would urge you to question your beliefs about topics that are hot societal discourse in your soc med’s trending page.
I highly, highly suggest going into this book without any context so you can fully immerse in the experience. I feel like coming into this book with bias from your favorite authors and/or reviewers will ruin the emotional rollercoaster ride that you will only get to maximize if you go on it alone.
Bonus plus if you like learning new vocabulary words through reading!
Favorite Quote(s)
“Consanguinity doesn’t translate into unique epistemological insight.”
— June Hayward
“Writing gives you power to shape your own world when the real one hurts too much. To stop writing would kill me.”
— June Hayward
“Perhaps that’s the price of professional success: isolation from jealous peers. Perhaps, once writing becomes a matter of individual advancement, it’s impossible to share with anyone else.”
— June Hayward
The Stray Reader 
Leave a comment