June Hayward was supposed to be a successful author, just like her best friend, Athena Liu. While Athena publishes book after book, June can’t sign a successful deal with a publishing company. So when Athena tragically passes away, June steals Athena’s newest novel; the rough draft for a book about the unseen work of Chinese laborers in World War I. So even when June decides to publish the book as her own, and even allows her publisher to rename her so she seems more ethnically-ambiguous, she still can’t escape Athena. The world wants to know who Juniper Song is, and June Hayward is not the same person. I thought this book was extremely well written. This book is about more than just the story, it’s also about the call for racial diversity in literature, cultural appropriation and the erasure of Asian-American voices from the media. It’s a book that truly evokes emotion and feeling into the reader. R. F. Kuang does an amazing job building up the characters in a way that makes you root for them and hate them at the same time. Every character in this story is somewhat morally gray. I started the story feeling sympathy for June, but as it continued my sympathy turned into anger. This book isn’t too long, and for anyone who is looking for something that is thrilling and interesting, I’d recommend this book to them.