Yellowface

Look, this was a good book, but I'm really glad its over. The vitriol and toxicity of social media in the novel (and let's be honest - in real life) gave me some very real anxiety - thank god I'm a reader and not a writer (haha).

I can't believe I put this one off for so long because I loved it, even though it was far from an easy, light read. The constricting feeling of anxiety had a hold on me throughout the whole thing. I hated June so very, very much, but I was still rooting for her. It was such a confusing feeling.
I can't give it more than 4 stars because it had way too many references that already feel dated. There were also some plot points that didn't make much sense to me, but overall, it's definitely a must-read.

For anyone who thinks protagonists have to be likable in order to enjoy a book, give this one a try. June is pretty horrible, the human incarnation of “I'm not racist, but...”, and yet Kuang preserves her humanity and allows the reader to feel empathy with her. She's awful, but she's not a caricature. She's a very real person, probably all too common in Kuang's publishing spheres. As a white woman with dreams of traditional publishing myself, I can't help but read her as a cautionary tale.

Yellowface is a major departure from Kuang's epic fantasies, but her writing is strong enough to cross genres effortlessly. I wouldn't call it a “fun” read. It's frustrating, complex, and frequently disheartening, but it is a good story that is vital and incredibly relevant in our social media fame-obsessed age.

I've been making an active effort this year to read books that are actually released in 2023. I found a few "most anticipated" lists and this was on most of them. I haven't read any other books by Kuang, but I have heard good things about them and they are on my to-read pile, plus this book has a great cover and provoking title. I put this on hold at the library a couple months ago and I was able to check out the audiobook on the actual day of release.

The premise is great: a successful Asian-American author dies unexpectedly, leaving behind an unpublished manuscript which is then claimed by a white friend as her own. Unfortunately, it doesn't explore it's titular issue as deeply as I think it could have. It is more just used as a passing point of tension, among other things.

This was well written, but a lot pulpier than I was expecting. The climax in particular I thought was cheesy and unsatisfying. However, the book does move at a brisk pace though and it was easy to keep turning pages.

The story is told from a first person perspective and the protagonist is extremely unlikable and makes unethical decisions constantly. She is not stupid nor ignorant, so she has at least some semblance of logic to justify her actions. She is entitlement personified. She thinks of herself as liberal, but she's more of a center-right "both sides have good points" sort of person. This can be an interesting perspective to tell a story from, but also makes it hard to latch onto as a reader at times.

I think there are a lot of really great ideas just below the surface here that didn't quite reveal themselves as fully as I was hoping. I'm curious to check out more of Kuang's work now though.

3.5

If I have learnt anything this year, it's that I will devour and enjoy anything that R.F. Kuang writes.

I'm going to be as vague as possible whilst still giving my thoughts because I don't like writing spoilers or anything in particular detailed for reviews, especially when it comes to books that aren't released to the public yet.

Yellowface covered important topics that are not often highlighted in books, especially when it comes to the publishing world. Racism, plagiarism, microaggressions and cultural appropriation are just some of the things that were portrayed in this book. This book was the definition of meta and satire and I loved every minute of it.

June was a protagonist that you didn't want to root for and that's something that you don't see often in books but I think it speaks volumes about how there are many people in the real world, in all types of workplaces and life in general like June who take advantage of the disadvantages of marginalised groups for their own benefit. I found myself so angry reading this at June's blatant disrespect, racism and self-righteous actions throughout the book. Just to name one out of many was when June was annoyed by others rightfully saying that many issues arise when it comes to white people writing stories from the point of view of marginalised groups, a point of view that white people will never experience or understand.

This was so unlike anything that Kuang has written and I'm excited to see what she writes next. I know that I will eat up anything that she publishes.

Thank you to NetGalley and HarperCollins for providing me with this ARC. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

After reading Babel and the trilogy series, I have never thought Kuang would explore a modern genre. This book is refreshing of Kuang's style, and it's incredibly good. The book will keep you holding your breath like waiting for a moment to pass through, but it didn't. Only towards the end, you could finally release your lung.

Quick read. To be honest, given the hype expected a much better storyline. Almost written for a TV show.

I'm not sure what to say. Maybe because I waited so long (library queue) for this, I feel kind of let down. It never got good, just more self-absorbed. I ended up being mad at all of them. Given how the author tried to make the protagonist sympathetic, it's hard to say whose side I land on. Maybe that was the point. I'm truly looking for a point here....

DNF

Main character is a sociopath. Are readers supposed to sympathize with this nutcase?

Depressing and lame.

edweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

I hated reading this almost as much as I loved it and that is exactly where this book’s greatness lies in. All of the characters are unbearable, starting by the narrator: June is a racist who excuses her behaviour by reminding herself that she’s a liberal, although she takes her hype from conservatives without a care in the world. She’s a jealous, troubled and two-faced woman who truly believes that she has done no wrong and that the only reason she hasn’t succeeded yet is that she is a white woman. What other solution is there than to steal her dead Chinese-American frenemy’s story and make it her own?

It is absolutely unbearable: how could someone be so deluded and ignorant? We are plunged into her perspective and keep reading more and more of the twisted lies she tells and ends up believing. To add insult to injury, June is surrounded by people who comfort her in her problematic views and defend her against those who dare question her authorship and allyship. Though maybe defend is too strong of a word, because they are all quick to abandon June once she is well and truly cancelled.

This is a callout of the publishing industry’s racism and misogyny, but also of its hypocrisy. No one is good, everyone is a shark who would throw a « friend » under a train to get a book-deal. Of course, we can’t forget about the book community and its hunger to find things that are wrong, to dissect a person or their work until it is nothing more than a grotesque imitation which they can nitpick and cut into pieces.

Truly, this was a wonderful book with a compelling story and complex, layered characters which offers a necessary criticism of the literary world.

My main issue is that we were spoon-fed every piece of information. The thinking was pre-chewed for us readers and we only had to open our mouths and swallow R. F. Kuang’s opinions. That is not to say that I don’t agree with them, simply that I believe some things should be left for readers to mull over and form their own beliefs about.

4 ✨

The main character in this novel is deeply unlikeable—and that's part of what makes the book so compelling. R.F. Kuang presents actions we'd usually see as clearly wrong (like plagiarism) in a morally grey light, forcing the reader to constantly question their assumptions. It's a fascinating, at times unsettling, reading experience.

While the plot can feel repetitive and slow in places, the writing is so sharp and engaging that it hardly matters. Even during quieter moments, I couldn't put the book down, which is exactly the reason I ended up finishing it in the middle of the night.

This is a bold, thought-provoking novel, and I haven't read anything quite like it before. While not without its flaws, it has stayed with me days after turning the final page. I'll definitely be reading more of R.F. Kuang's work!

Книга непогана, але не розумію за що вона визнана кращою книгою 2023 року в goodreads. Всю книгу думав, що оцінка буде 4, але фінальна частина настільки незавершена і нелогічна, що поставив тільки 3. Ну серйозно, таке враження що її написали за пару хв до друку, або скоротили закінчення бо був ліміт по сторінках. Макові війни зміг тільки перший том домучити, ця така собі, ще залишаю надію на Вавилон, але якщо і там розчаруюся, то мабуть треба признати, що то не мій стиль написання.

One-Sentence book review
I read someone on Reddit compare the feeling of reading this book to seeing a car crash you can't look away from, and I think it's a pretty accurate description, in a good way, if you can imagine that.

Summary, thoughts and notesYellowface is the first book I read from R. F. Kuang, which is interesting given I mostly read fantasy, and this is the only novel she's published that's not a fantasy book (as far as I know as of the writing of this review), and I do have some thoughts.The book revolves around two central characters, Juniper (June), our incredibly unlikeable protagonist, and Athena. Both are authors, however, Athena has substantially more success, having Netflix deals and being an international best seller, while Juniper struggles to barely make ends meet with her earnings. Despite that, they're "friends" (more on that later), a series of unfortunate events happen, and Athena dies, while having just (very conveniently) shown June the manuscripts for her latest novel, which no one knows about, not even her publisher. So what does June do in such a dire situation? Steal the manuscript and publish it as her own, obviously, but not without first editing it enough to where she feels comfortable telling herself it's just as much hers as it is Athena's.The rest of the book very much reads as a sort of "monster of the week" show, where June is presented with a difficult situation which she must face head on (why write a book where one of the main focuses is Asian history and struggle if you're white? being the main question that keeps popping up), and she just handles every single situation in just the worst way possible. June is definitely the type of character you love to hate, her racism is so apparent, even though she tries her hardest to convince herself she's not.Like I said, most of the book follows the same path, and, well, it ends on that same note, which I really liked, it was a very human ending, narcissistic people don't tend to change when shown the error of their ways, rather, they double down and keep going on whatever path they had already decided was the best, which I thought was a very clever way to end the book.I liked the book, but didn't love it. It's certainly well written, and it's very fast paced, each chapter just leaves you with enough of that cliffhanger feeling that you just want to keep reading the next one. This is all great, but I do feel like some of the themes that are explored in the book aren't actually explored that deeply, and which I think could have been fleshed out more. For instance, June's relationship with her family presented an interesting family dynamic, where she's (now) super successful after publishing Athena's work, but they are completely oblivious to it and their interactions are just a loop of June trying to make them understand her struggles and them just diminishing her feelings. I would have loved to have these relationships fleshed out since some of these characters just felt very one-dimensional.Something I think works both in favor and against the book is how modern it is, by that I mean that the protagonist is someone who is chronically online, and the book constantly references and makes emphasis on her struggles with reading about herself on social media like Twitter and Goodreads. I think this was more of a stylistic choice, which I liked.On the other hand, I feel like those same references might make the book feel a bit dated, even now (Twitter is called X now, for example), and I do think that this reduces the potential audience for the book, older generations might not understand or just not care about why June is so obsessed with strangers' opinions on the internet, and I also feel like even younger generations might not care, since they are also online all the time, but the concept of book publishing might be seen as some archaic, old-school thing that's no longer relevant when you can just self publish on the internet nowadays without much trouble.The author mentioned in an interview that she wanted the book to feel like an anxiety attack, while I'm not sure I feel that way, I can see where she's coming from, with June just constantly doing the opposite of what a decent person would do. I also can't help but wonder how much of what is portrayed in the book is the author personally inserting certain aspects of her life (albeit in an exaggerated way, maybe?) in the story, which is fine, but it did make it feel a little to meta at times to me.The best thing about the book is hands down the relationship between Athena and June, since Athena dies so early in the book, it makes their relationship extremely ambiguous, and we are left feeling that they weren't friends so much as tools they each were using for their own benefit. Athena preyed on other peoples' life stories (including June) to create her own narratives, while June pined for the life Athena had so she would let her invite her for drinks and food. It's clear neither of the two were what we would describe as good people, but since June is herself an unreliable narrator, everything is up for grabs regarding how we choose to interpret their relationship.I would recommend this book as a quick, easy, palate cleanser type book. While not everything the author did landed with me, it has its merits, it is well written, and does offer an interesting view into the modern publishing world which I don't think many books dive into, even if in a fictional/exaggerated context. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone who needs to have a morally good protagonist to enjoy a story, or anyone who wants the "bad guy" to get what's coming to them. If you can live with that, I do think that it's worth giving it a shot, even if some of the things the author did didn't land with me, that's more of a "me" problem.Overall, I think the book is good, but I personally didn't love it, it did leave me wanting to read the other books the author has written, just to see if I like her fantasy work better.

insufferable

usually I don't give up on a book, but after the first two chapters I could tell exactly where it was going and it didn't seem like I would enjoy any of it. I skipped a hundred pages to see if maybe that changed further through the book but then gave up when the film exec said "herro" to imitate an asian accent.

Unfortunately I was interested how this book ends and so read the final 50 pages yesterday, which to me is enough to say I finished the book rather than DNFing

This book is so shallow and unsubtle, set in exactly the present day (with references that'll age like milk) but the characters attitudes feel so out of touch with current day discourses.

I'm really surprised that RF Kuang's publishers agreed to publish this. It is literally her making up a strawman of her critics and spending the whole book making sure you know they are stupid. I'm even more surprise how this swept every popular book award last year

I joined this site as I was reading goodreads reviews of this book this morning and someone mentioned the Authors Note of Babel which I found to be both indulgent and petulant. It's really embarrassing for her how much she needs to control how people interact with her work and understand that she knows what she's doing. Her and JKR need to log off if they ever want to write a good book again.

This is the book that was different from what I have read till now that we're 6 books this one was my 6th one as I started my journey last year. This book shows twitter reality, how people feels when they get anxiety, what people do for money, how there can be not much of character growth, what people can do when things don't go their way and so much more. The things I predicted some happened some not. I would say it was a good plot, well-written. Definitely should be read by authors or the people who want to become an author as it does tell many things that author goes in the process of writing, editing, publishing, criticism, etc.

Incredibly unlikeable main character, but I guess that was the point. It was like watching 'Inventing Anna'; it was all so wrong, and at the same time you have to keep watching to see what she's getting away with. Juniper gets more delusional throughout the story. She was so convinced of her own roll as the victim, she kept justifying all her wrongdoings. I was hoping the truth would come out, but the ending felt very unsatisfactory.

And is the publishing industry truly this insanely competitive? Being a writer doesn't sound that fun if this is the stuff you have to deal with.

The whole time I was flabbergasted. I think the author did a great job at making you feel like Juniper. It made her thought processes easier to digest, despite how outrageous some of it seems. It also feels relatable, on a far less extreme level, how Juniper seems to fight against her morality/how she continues to push the boundary of this moral grey area to fit her narrative. It touches on a few social debates regarding appropriation and the like, which always kind of feels relevant.

Yellowface – 3.5 Stars:

There’s a lot going on in this book, and it’s clear that a ton of research and attention to detail—especially in language—went into it. The smaller twists are plenty and original, but the overall arc is fairly predictable.

It’s like seeing bright patches of color up close, but when you step back, the canvas itself isn’t offering anything new. The pace is brisk, but the story loses steam in the last quarter, possibly from hesitancy in wrapping things up or the challenge of clarifying all the themes.

The writing style felt a bit juvenile for my taste, but the audiobook narration by Helen Laser was very good.

7.2/10 - she fucking cray lol

Man June’s denial is craaaazy LMAO. I was getting second hand embarrassment so hard, I live for the drama

DNF @ 18%

i didn’t really vibe with the book and i was struggling to get into it. apart from that i did enjoy what i read and i’m hoping i’ll pick it back up at some point

I am quick to judge a book by its cover and by what I have heard about it in passing. I thought this would be a social commentary discussion and would be closer to an autobiography. I was quite wrong and happy that I was.

The story was great, and the writing was perfect for it. I loved that we had only the view of the white author as it added to the delusions of this person. THIS WOMAN! The main character is just a terrible person, and I enjoyed every moment of her terribleness. This perspective we get is well done and I liked how through this point of view we can see her justify each action to herself. The ending could rival a horror story.

Commentary on social issues brought up through out the book but not fully discussed. Which makes sense considering the point of view this story is in. I liked that the author left the questions like who can write about what in our hands. I don’t always like when points are told and repeated. This book perfectly shows us these issues and lets us make the connections. It made the book refreshing.

2.5 stars

Largely disappointed with how it turned out. It started good and very meta. But as the story goes on, it somehow lost it's path underneath all of Junie's narcissistic self-victimhood. I feel like I would've love the way the events had turned out if it hadn't end up in the most anti-climactic and artificial wat as possible. Like, almost all of the events that had happened (sans Athena dying by choking on a fucking pancake lmao) seems like something you'd actually stumble upon a trending thread on booktwt. But then the last 20% had happened and all the possibilities had died now without much flourish.

We didn't even know what happened with Athena's mom!

The writing aside, I guess the snarky writing helped me go through this without giving up because Junie and insufferable and so unrepentant that it's just too laughable on my end. She's almost a cartoonish character by the end.