Loved, loved, loved, loved this book!
I'm hardly in the minority by declaring my love for Yellowface, I don't think I've seen a bad review of it yet, and this isn't going to be the first.
I devoured it!
I loved how current it is, how darkly comic it is, how it skewers the publishing industry and how bloody awful, yet completely compelling the main characters are.
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When Athena dies in a freak accident, June steals her unpublished manuscript and publishes it as her own under the ambiguous name Juniper Song.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.
Firstly, kudos to Kuang for the most bizarre death in literature…and for the tension she built in that first chapter. There were so many moments where I was on the edge of my seat thinking here comes the accident, only to find it was another red herring.
When Athena's bizarre death did come, I was completely taken aback.
I'm a big fan of dark humour, I'm a fan of satire and Yellowface has this in bucketloads, and it is absolutely delicious.
It's a book I couldn't put down, despite the fact that June/Juniper is one of the most unlikeable characters I have ever come across (though I did feel a little sorry for her when she was being relentlessly trolled).
She's really bitter, she's consumed by jealous and desperate to keep hold of her 'success' at any cost. The lengths she'll go to, to keep her secret buried had me gobsmacked, she was really quite ruthless and wasn't going to let anyone get in her way.
It was interesting watching her convince herself that she'd done nothing wrong, that her reasons for stealing the manuscript were as much for Athena as herself; she believed her own lies.
I couldn't believe her audacity!
I read some paragraphs with one eye closed, I was cringing and on the edge of shouting 'what are you doing?'. There were moments where I wanted to jump into the pages, grab hold of her and tell her to stop.
She is the epitome of someone who thinks the world owes her a living and yet, I couldn't get enough of her. I wanted to see how far she'd go, what idiotic move she was going to make next; it was really compulsive.
And yet, I didn't at any point feel sorry for Athena either.
I can't say I was chomping at the bit for someone to swoop in and reveal June's fraud and restore Athena's legacy because she wasn't exactly likeable either, she was someone who used people for her own gain. Granted, my perception of Athena comes entirely from June's retelling of their "friendship", and she's hardly the most reliable of narrators.
I loved the debates that Yellowface raises, the themes are so relevant to the time we're living in now and discussions that are taking place online.
It raises questions about heritage and cultural appropriation and who has the right to tell stories about the history of marginalised people? It looks at ingrained racism and how deep that goes.
It asks the question, who has the right to tell anyone's story? Is it okay to 'mine' people for their personal experiences? Because, let's just say Athena likes to partake in her own brand of theft.
It's a fascinating insight into the publishing industry. It looks at how writers are treated as commodities. They're personality, looks, skin colour, background and of course, their online personas are all seen as being part of the package it isn't just about the work.
Rebecc F. Kuang hooked me in with this thriller centred around the publishing world immediately. It'll induce back ache in places, I loved the fact that I could never be sure of what I should believe all the way through. I didn't know whether or not I was being conned by June's version of events and that's why I couldn't put it down.
It's a fantastic story that will make question things too.
Yellowface, deserves the hype, read it!
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