Athena Liu is everything that June Hayward wants to be. Beautiful, charismatic, and, most importantly, a successful author. After June’s debut novel fails spectacularly, she becomes jealous of Athena, who is extremely successful for her age. But when Athena invites June to her apartment to hang out, she chokes to death on uncooked pancake batter. June is terrified and she calls the police immediately. But before leaving the scene, she spots an unfinished manuscript for Athena’s upcoming novel, which she has told no one about yet. In a small twist of fate, June steals the manuscript and tweaks it so it comes off as her own writing, portraying the story as her own. June's overnight success comes great amounts of suspicion, especially to those that were close to Athena. As June struggles to keep herself relevant, the overwhelming threat of her fake fame might come into fruition.
This novel was INSANE. There truly isn’t another novel like this. The plot was fast-paced and CRAZY. June's justification for stealing Athena’s manuscript is so well-done that I almost found myself siding with her at times. Don’t get me wrong, June is morally wrong on all accounts but R.F. Kuang creates her characters so realistically and each has their own justifications on why they act the way they do. June was extremely annoying in the way she constantly sided with being right in her own actions (even though she stole something out of jealousy of her best friend). Yellowface was an incredibly easy read in the way that it perfectly executes sensitive topics like race with ease. I’m pretty sure I finished this book in two days because of how addicting it was. I need to know how June’s fate would turn out. The novel kept me on the edge of my seat. The only issue I had with it was that I’m not 100% sure which side its on when discussing the idea of whether non-Asians are able to write Asian literature. This is essentially the main trouble of June stealing Athena’s manuscript, not the fact that she STOLE the manuscript. Overall, I deeply enjoyed reading this book and am looking forward to reading other books by the author.