The premise — a dark satire of the world of publishing — is so unique, and the writing is SO ADDICTIVE! Every time I started to get a little bored, June did something even more insane, and I was sucked right back into the story. The plot was super fast paced and the story was so juicy I couldn’t put it down. 

 

The ending was a bit unsatisfying but I guess that’s kind of the point. No matter how ‘cancelled’ June gets, she’s always going to be able to make money off of people’s outrage. The worse her behavior, the more her books sell, so she never really needs to learn her lesson. 

 

June is such a hate-able protagonist, which means that she’s completely perfect for this book. June is completely delusional — it’s so easy for her to believe her own lies and buy into her own hype that she has no issue forgiving herself for any number of sins. June’s a complete hypocrite — everything that she hates about Athena she loves about herself when she steals Athena’s work. Every behavior that made June hate Athena, she begins to emulate as soon as she begins to reach Athena’s level of success. Not to mention the number of racist micro (and macro) aggressions that June never gives a second thought, all while asserting that because she’s done a lot of historical research, she would never need a sensitivity reader. 

 

I like how R. F. Kuang is able to write such nuanced characters. Every character’s motivations are selfish in some way. This is more obvious for some characters (June, Geoff) than others (Athena, Candice), but at the end of the day, every character is motivated by their desire for fame, money, and prestige.