hillary's Reviews > Yellowface

HOLY SHIT.
I bet any other author could have tried with a premise like this and would have inevitably failed. No one writes morally grey like R.F. Kuang and I'm saying this because my anxiety skyrocketed the more I read + I'm still haunted by these characters days later. It basically was like a trainwreck from beginning to end, where you know things are only getting worse but you're still so weirdly fascinated with it you can't stop looking.

I'm positive I've never read something so meta in my entire life. This one is for the publishing industry nerds, and honestly I foresee this being very difficult to market outside of such a niche community. It was so in-depth into the industry it made my heart sing and despare at the same time (as a publishing post-graduate first and then as a compulsive reader part of the online community). It managed to highlight a slew of things that make publishing not such a great place to be at in very few pages and I'm amazed. To me this book kind of felt like a very long article but with twists and turns. Now I know why they released arcs so early (looking at you, HarperCollins 👀). Book twitter will have a field day with this one...

What a choice to have the main narrative voice be the plagiarizer (and in first person at that). Both Athena and June are awful people, and I love that neither of them is a saint, but reading the entire thing from June's pov? Insane. She's a frustrating character, not gonna lie, but she's also deliciously realistic as a two-faced, self-absorbed and dishonest manipulator that always has an excuse ready. She goes out of her way to say to the reader that she wants to do something for poc every chance she gets, but the reality is that she's a bitch trying to profit from it all in an industry that lets her do it. Sometimes it's subtle, sometimes it's not too difficult to miss her slipping into a plain wrong mentality and lol, basic whiteness. You think you're safe as the external reader? Not a chance. I'm not proud to say I fell straight into R.F. Kuang's trap, because was I seriously rooting for such a cheater the entire time? This book brainwashed me into supporting someone who stole a whole manuscript immediately after witnessing the author's death and reaching stardom by publishing it as her own. I got to the point where I was scared she was going to get caught and hoped she would get out of it unscathed. My brain ignored all the red flags and procedeed to scam me until the very end. I mean, of course I ended up wishing she would kill someone to shut them up. Of course I got second-hand anxiety from her messing up with her publishing team and at her events. Of course I cared about her mental health. Am I okay or what? Is it time for me to get theraphy too?

On the other hand, Athena is harder to grasp. You really need to have the whole picture with her, which you only get by reading the book till the end. I loved the way RFK slowly built her character. You only read about her from June's perpective when she's already dead and still she comes through as the main character, not less because June is literally obsessed with her. Well-written toxic friendships are my bread and butter and the one in here was one of my favorites. The way it was dealt with: nothing less of spectacular. I found June's morality to be the most interesting aspect of this book, but the relationship between her and Athena comes in second for sure.

Much care went into the secondary characters too. Even when they only fully appeared once or twice, they always had a well-rounded story behind them. I can apply that specifically to the publishing team and Geoff. From that last one it's again apparent and so on-the-nose how me and RFK's morally grey characters just work together. What can I say? I'm fascinated with them. Geoff reminded me of so many white male authors on twitter but he just had a pull. I loved that he was so pathetic, that I never knew what he was going to do and then, when I least expected it and as naturally as possible, he showed a completely different side to himself.

There are a couple of things I didn't completely enjoy, mainly the pop culture references (way too many, half of them were necessary, the others not so much), and the ending. Overall the ending itself wasn't bad, I loved how it wrapped up, but that final showdown bordered on cartoonish and because of that it was hard to take it seriously. I also feel like the final chapter is missing, although I understand what this novel is actually supposed to be (have I said meta already?).

In conclusion, an amazing foray into general fiction by R.F. Kuang. I swear this woman can do no wrong. Give her whatever topic to write about and I bet she can create something incredible out of the most boring premise. I think it's impressive how she took these modern controversies and wrote them into a twisty unputdownable story. It seems to me like it's a new experiment from her but at the same time a really smart jab at publishing too.
I wouldn't say it's a perfect book and I'm unsure if I would reread it like The Poppy War trilogy; however I can't exclude it won't live in my mind rent free as I still catch myself heavily thinking about it.