I very much enjoyed this book. It was fun behind-the-scenes look into the world of publishing. It was one of those stories where you should hope the protagonist gets caught but you're rooting for them to succeed in their crimes, kind of like Ocean's Eleven. I would definitely recommend this book!

A scathing look at the publishing industry and white privilege, Yellowface is the kind of book that makes you cringe, sometimes because of the terrible decisions the protagonist makes, and sometimes because the mirror might be a little to reflective. June Hayward is a writer who had little success with her debut novel, but classmate Athena Liu has taken the publishing world be storm. Their friendship is tainted by past decisions and current successes (or lack thereof), and when Athena dies suddenly, June takes the opportunity to pilfer an unfinished manuscript. As June hides the true story behind her breakout novel, her editor suggests changing her name to June Song (her ambiguous middle name), and a debate starts on social media about how stories about marginalized identities should be told. A quick literary thriller that will keep you turning the page.

Somehow my first RF Kuang book, but definitely not my last. I loved the writing style and how the main character, June, has such a distinct voice. The topic was also so interesting and topical, especially if you are in the book industry at all. Just a really great read with a really horrible main character.

I'm not sure how to review this book... I really wanted it to turn into a ghost story. I thought the writing was really engaging, but it also felt less like I was reading a book and more like I was reading a really impressive writing exercise. And even while the book was very readable, there was a distance in the writing. It never quite felt like I was immersed in the story. It always felt like I was being told what was happening. That said, I did enjoy the way the publishing industry was described here. I've read a few books about the world of publishing, and it felt really believable here. I also loved how gross it felt to be inside June's mind as she rationalized her behavior. She was the worst, and Kuang did a great job at humanizing her without excusing any of her bad choices. The concepts of cultural appropriation and who is "allowed" to tell what stories is really complicated, and I don't trust anyone who tries to be too clever about it, but I do think what Kuang has done here with her white MC is interesting and certain to lead to lots of heated conversation.

This was such a fantastic version of "rooting for an unlikeable character!" June/Juniper is horrendous and also relatable, and I couldn't' wait to see what happened with her in this novel. So very different from Babel but also fantastic.

reading this felt like coming upon a car crash you can’t look away from — v entertaining and harrowing all at the same time

This was such an absorbing, fascinating, frustrating read. Overall I really enjoyed the insider look into the world of writing and publishing, and obviously R.F. Kuang is a fantastic writer. For the most part, I couldn’t put this down, but there is a section in the middle of the book that focuses on Twitter and that really dragged on for me. But I think this is one of the standout books I’ve read so far this year!

RF Kuang does it again, and in a whole new genre! Yellowface was utterly devourable. Once I picked it up, I was hardly able to put it down, having to keep turning the pages to see what would happen next. It's a searing satire of the publishing industry while also being a fascinating character study. I would recommend this book to all kinds of readers, because I feel like it is fast-paced and captivating while also having so much going on beneath the surface.

This book has been everywhere lately, and it's not hard to see why people want to talk about it. June and Athena would not have been friends, if not for their shared university and profession. Athena's career has taken off and she's on the precipice of a big break when she dies, right in front of June. June is in a panic and calls the cops, but not before she steals her unfinished manuscript. The rest of the story explores what happens when June decides to take Athena's work and pass it off as her own. There's themes of cultural appropriation, diversity in the publishing industry, and friendship. I thought the story waned a bit toward the end but I did enjoy reading it. Kuang is a very talented writer and I love that she took this on.

I enjoyed the premise of this book. The way the author writes, made me want to keep turning the pages. The main character just kept making bad decisions which kept the story very interesting and twisty

First, a huge thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this ARC in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

R.F. Kuang does a deep dive into the toxicity of the publishing industry and poses the important question: who should or shouldn't be allowed to tell a story? Yellowface centers on June Hayward, a white woman who has secretly stolen the draft of her now deceased Chinese-American friend Athena Liu's novel and published it as her own. Throughout the novel June struggles to justify her inherently selfish choices and deludes herself into believing that passing a work built upon Chinese culture and history under the rebranded name Juniper Song, with an ethnically ambiguous author photo to match, does not harm the community in Athena's book. Yellowface follows the conversation on authenticity, racism, xenophobia, and plagiarism in the publishing industry with Kuang providing a timely commentary on racism and cultural appropriation that will keep readers hooked.

YELLOWFACE by R.F. KUANG
Published 5/16/2023 by William Morrow / Harper Collins Publishing
Page Count: 336 pages


Analogous to “Blackface” the appropriation of the Asian culture by a White is just as
offensive, disrespectful and racist. In the highly touted and acclaimed Chinese-American author’s fifth novel, diverging from her past success in the fantasy genre, she turns her pen onto a satire of multiple dimensions. She not only satirizes the publishing industry, but also
casts aspersions on social media, especially twitter, as well as the cancel culture, racism, and sometimes toxic nature of female friendship.
Our two main protagonists are June Hayward and Athena Liu. Both are graduates of Yale, and aspiring writers. June has published her debut novel to little fanfare, and is essentially floundering and in a writer’s block and unable to release a successful follow-up. Meanwhile, her “friend” Athena, a beautiful Asian-American is the darling of the publishing industry, with a mega-successful debut novel and has garnered a multi book deal straight out of college. To say the least, June is extremely jealous of Athena, and is somewhat dubious of the validity of their so-called friendship, and at times has fantasized even about being Athena.
The novel opens with the two writer’s toasting to Athena’s amazing lucrative new Netflix deal. In celebration Athena after champaign toasts ops to make her special pancakes for them. In a freak accident Athena chokes on the pancakes , as June stands by helplessly and witnesses her freakish death. June notices an unpublished first working draft manuscript on Athena’s desk and takes it home. She assumes that no-one is aware of its existence. Titled: The Last Front, she is impressed with this war epic, extolling the unsung contributions of the Chines Labour Corps….the Chinese workers who were recruited by the British Army and sent to the front during World War I. June decides to edit and fill in gaps in the manuscript and make it “her own.” She adds a romantic angle and attempts to make some of the white characters more sympathetic, June finds justification and remembers how Athena appropriated a traumatic sexual event in June’s life as related to Athena in confidence … only to note its appearance in an award-winning short story by Athena. Athena has appropriated others personal pain and suffering and turned into award winning fiction. Just how common is literary theft? Many white authors wonder and accuse ethnic writers of their success based upon diversity, rather than merit.
She presents the finished product to the publishing house, who anticipate it’s worth and importance, and offer to publish “The Last Front” as written by, “Jennifer Song”, with somewhat indistinct picture of June, The novel is a huge success, but after publication cracks in the veneer occur with questions arising in the media regarding its authenticity, and possible culture appropriation.
Kuang once again proves to be a masterful storyteller and spins a marvelous satirical mystery that escalates into a page turner as it criticizes not only the publishing industry but also social media and the cancel culture, and racism, and the insanity of it all. It is not an accident that such a fine Asian-American writer pens a yarn about the tokenization of Asian American authors.
Thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow Publications for providing an Uncorrected Proof in exchange for an honest review. There is no telling where Kuang will set her sights on next … but I certainly will gobble it up.

Really sharp and smart. Loved the commentary on whitewashing, racism, microaggressions, and the publishing industry in general. What a great critique on where we are as a society.

Not my favorite, but I'm sure this will continue to be a popular pick in our collection. An easy page-turning type of book.

The entirety of the book I felt so weird. It's an unreliable narrator who is trying to make it in the publishing world. It grabbed me and I couldn't stop listening to it. It was a car crash in slow motion, where you see exactly where the car is going to flip but you cant do anything but watch it flip over and over and over again. It has a haunting feel to it. It's not what I was expecting to read, I have only read the first Poppy War book and loved it but didn't continue bc well life, but I'm gonna have to read RFK's other works. Yellowface has you seeing how crazy the publishing field is, and all done from a pretty popular author... Makes me wonder who pissed her off. But on the other hand, impressed that she wrote about it in the first place. The characters are done so well, main character will never take the blame always finding a way to manipulate the story to make herself look good. Super morally gray.

RF Kuang is quite literally brilliant. This was amazing. The main character was infuriating which made me love RF Kuang writing even more.

Thank you to the publisher, HCC Frenzy, and NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

June Hayward and Athena Liu both graduated from Yale and had their debut novels published in the same year. Where Athena soon became the industry’s darling and an acclaimed author, June’s novel was barely noticed. When Athena dies in a freak accident and June is the only witness, she steals Athena’s newest novel on impulse, finishes writing it, and presents it to her agent as her own work. Except, book is about the contributions of Chinese laborers during WWI, and June is white, so she agrees to be published under the name Juniper Song to present a more ambiguous perspective of her ethnicity. And the book is a huge success, with sales through the roof, making the bestseller list and nominated for awards. But someone out there knows her secret and threatens to ruin everything. Athena’s ghost continues to hang over her and June scrambles to guard her secret. How far will she go to protect her ill-gotten fame and success?

I’d actually been considering whether to add this book to my TBR or not for several months. It’s a contemporary novel which is far from my favorite genre and I generally don’t tend to have a good reading experience with these books. But having read Babel last year (which I absolutely loved), I was far too curious about this new book from R. F. Kuang to skip it despite being a bit nervous. Not to mention, the blurb is so intriguing and I just had to know how this story would turn out.

Within the first couple of chapters, I knew this book was going to be worth the read. It offered an intriguing look into not only the publishing industry and how the process works, but also social media and its impact on it and the bookish community. It took these concepts and intertwined it with the tense mood of a thriller and it had me at the edge of my seat throughout, eager to know what would happen next.

Yellowface touches on a lot of important topics such as racism in the publishing industry, ongoing trends, social media scandals relating to authors and reviewers and how vicious the related backlash can be and more. The behind-the-scenes glimpse of the publishing industry were what I found most interesting as I didn’t really know much is involved between an author writing a book and getting it on shelves.

This book was very fast-paced and easy to read. In fact, the narrative was so addictive a read that it is easily binge reading material – I nearly missed my stop on the train because I was so caught up in it. The writing was marvellous of course and I liked how the author launched straight into the plot without delay, allowing the characters’ background to unfold more gradually throughout the book.

While I wouldn’t say June was a likeable character exactly or even remotely a protagonist, this book was written in such a way that you can’t look away as she makes decision after bad decision, justifying each one to herself in some twisted way, and you just need to know how it will end, if she’s really going to get away with it. She was a realistically written character however, and her actions and reactions were entirely believable if more and more morally questionable as the book goes on.

So I’d kind of guessed who was behind the mysterious and threatening messages June was getting by the last 10-15%, there weren’t really many possible suspects by that point. But I loved the way those final chapters played out and especially the note the book concluded on. It left the ending a little open on what the future might hold for June despite everything that happened and for once, I’m not even annoyed about the ambiguity of it.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book and I can’t remember the last time I said that about a contemporary novel. While I wouldn’t say it’s one of my favorites, Yellowface is definitely a novel that I’ll remember for a long time. I would highly recommend this book to all readers, it’s certainly a novel that would fit a wide range of reading tastes.

It seems safe to say that R.F. Kuang’s Yellowface is like no other book you’ll read this spring. Possibly in the whole of 2023 entirely. It’s addictive, shocking, compelling, ridiculous, and extremely fun to read by turns. It wrestles with hot-button topics in publishing surrounding race, classism, white privilege, and tokenism. And its unlikeable lead characters will not only leave you wondering who—if anyone—we’re meant to be rooting for, but how potentially complicit we are in upholding publishing’s worse tendencies by reading a book called Yellowface in the first place. What I’m saying is, this book is a whole lot, and whether or not it is a book for you is probably going to have to be adjudicated on a case-by-case basis.

That Yellowface will inevitably be one of the spring’s buzziest and most controversial novels seems like a foregone conclusion. In many ways, that reaction will be deserved: The book is almost compulsively readable, and its plot is fast-paced and relentless. You’ll find yourself promising just one more page the same way you always mean to spend just one more minute scrolling through your Instagram reels or Twitter feed. There’s an element of voyeurism here that’s hard to resist—the vibe is very “yes, finally, someone’s telling it how it is about the way publishing really works!”—-and, admittedly, it’s always kind of fun to watch an unlikeable character like Juniper exploit an unfair system for her own gain and be so unapologetic about it. But despite its necessary and all too true themes, there’s also an uncomfortable, overly meta feel to this book—-if you’re part of the online world of publishing, be it Book Twitter, BookTok, or Instagram influencer programs, a lot of this story will feel painfully familiar to you.

This is an expertly crafted book about ambition, cultural appropriation, and the dark underbelly of the publishing industry. Told from the perspective of an unreliable and purposefully unlikable narrator, Kuang plays with readers' perception of the truth and right vs wrong. I loved that this toed the line between contemporary fiction and suspenseful mystery and the slow-burn style of the mystery. Kuang is a master of her craft in any genre and this book was no different.

The hyper-specific niche that I love is a story about a conperson. Yellowface checks that box for me.

There is so much hype about this book that all I feel like I can say is that the hype is right!

Witnessing the though process of the main character and the way she gas lights herself through out the whole book is so hard to watch but makes you keep coming for more.