Yellowface – Book Review

Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars: same year at Yale, same debut year in publishing. But Athena’s a cross-genre literary darling, and June didn’t even get a paperback release. Nobody 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 to the British and French war efforts 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.

With its totally immersive first-person voice, Yellowface takes on questions of diversity, racism, and cultural appropriation not only in the publishing industry but the persistent erasure of Asian-American voices and history by Western white society. R. F. Kuang’s novel is timely, razor-sharp, and eminently readable.

This book had been in my TBR for sometime and I finally got my hands on this book. This is the first time I have been reading books written by R.F. Kuang.

Yellowface is about a struggling author June Hayward who is spending a night with her frenemy Athena Liu to celebrate her success with a Netflix deal. They are both graduate from Yale University and, they both released their debut novels at the same time but Athena rose to fame compared to June who couldn’t even rise to the fame. Then while at Athena’s home, Athena suddenly dies from a choking incident. June comes across some of Athena’s manuscripts and then decided to well steal them.

Then June publishes those manuscripts and soon she rose to fame. But someone knows what June had done and is determined to expose June.

I did like this book. The story is mainly told in June’s POV. The first part of the book was really interesting and fast paced and I was actually literally hooked to the novel. But then, by the end of the book, I felt it kind of became a bit…boring. However, I really like the author’s style of writing. For the whole part of the book, I felt June’s voice telling me her own story and explaining the whole story to me so kudos to the good writing! The story also talks a great deal about plagiarism, racism, and above all depression. The author kind of a gave a painting of what publishing a book is really like, those Goodreads reviews, the critics commenting on the book so in a way, overall, this was realistically written.

I actually liked June and I understand her pain and suffering and how she determined to make her name as a writer. As a reader, I felt I was interacting with June, as she shares all these emotions and feelings in the book. Overall, I feel this book worth the hype and worth four stars!