Thank you to Harper Collins Canada for the digital arc in return for an honest review.

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang is a dark satire about an unsuccessful white author who, after witnessing her very successful author friend's death, steals her manuscript and publishes it as her own. Then comes her descent into bad decision after bad decision. This book explores a lot of different topics such as, cancel culture and online drama, who gets to tell certain stories, and an interesting insight into the publishing industry.

I found a lot of the explorations into things such as ‘cancel culture’ to be really interesting and well done. So often when someone critiques cancel culture it is often only when they themselves have been ‘cancelled’ (aka been held accountable for their actions) and their main argument they have against it is just that it’s bad because there should be free speech and whatnot. Yellowface accurately represented how outrage by one side is often very much performative and has a short lifespan, moving from one drama to the next, rather than actually caring about the issue. I liked the way it showed that as soon as the ‘victim’ in the drama was shown to not be this perfect, flawless person, they started getting attacked and ‘cancelled’ as well, having the drama turn very quickly, before just moving on, allowing people to just get away with their actions. It also showed how right-wing media and personalities will use to outrage and promote the things being “cancelled”, particularly when these people are white and it has something to with race among other issues. This is something we witness so much online but I’ve never really seen reflected in any books or other media so it was interesting to see R.F. Kuangs take on this.

I’ll be candid and say that I am a big fan of R.F. Kuang, so I went into this book knowing I’d enjoy it. I found the character study of June to be well done and so fascinating, it’s essentially a book from the villain’s perspective, however she doesn’t seem to think she's the villain. She often defends her actions, and is trying to reason to the audience (and I think also herself) that something like stealing someone’s manuscript is actually a good thing. We follow her many bad decisions and the descent that that takes her on, being cancelled and trying to hide said decisions for example, and just leaves you waiting for it all to blow up in her face. She is at times almost laughably ignorant, saying something so tone deaf or racist and defending herself by saying she ‘voted for Biden’ or that she supports young asian authors, almost painting herself as the white saviour. Other times she seems to realise that she is the bad guy, but it got her to where she is and doesn’t seem to care anymore. It was interesting to see the outward mask she has where she tries to paint herself as progressive, caring about social issues, essentially a ‘leftist’, but inwardly she is very much the opposite, and much more conservative thinking and much more inline with a lot of right wing thinking. She represents something that actually occurs a lot in celebrities and public figures where they are just socially progressive. This outward mask could also be seen in other characters, most interestingly in Athena’s ex boyfriend and the movie producer team. It was a small detail, but I just found it very fascinating to see.

Despite my overall enjoyment of Yellowface, there are definitely a few issues I have. Some minor ones being that there were a few occurrences where I found the dialogue to just be cheesy and unbelievable, most memorable was early on when June sees an ad for her book in the subway I think it was and some people walking by say something along the lines of “that sounds super interesting, I might check that out”, loud enough for June to hear. Maybe it’s just me but it sounded like something that absolutely would never happen. Another one being that, while most of the time I thought she did a good job of toeing the line of comedy and commentary on people like June, there were some points where she just felt like a caricature rather than a well written character, that while they are definitely in the wrong, still feel real.

My last issue, which I’ve seen a few other people have, is a lot bigger and with the entirety of the book. Yellowface, as I’ve stated, follows June who steals Athena’s manuscript after she passes away. Athena is described as this very successful author, she’s pretty, talented and overall just seems to be perfect in every way. While the book does eventually show that Athena had many faults and definitely wasn’t perfect, a lot of the criticisms against this character are passed off as only jealousy. The problem here especially is that Athena is very similar to R.F. Kuang herself, R.F. Kuang as an author has been very open about putting a lot of herself into her work, and I think that’s great honestly. But a lot of the criticisms directed at Athena are ones that R.F. Kuang has received, and also seem to be very valid criticisms, not just jealousy or racism as this book tries to paint them as. The result of this is that it makes it difficult to criticise something for valid reasons without being grouped into the people that are genuinely just criticising it for those reasons.

I did really enjoy Yellowface, it was funny and provided a needed commentary and opened up a discussion on the publishing industry and how we interact with it online especially. I will definitely be continuing to read everything R.F. Kuang writes and Yellowface has cemented her as an author who can do more than just historical fantasy. I have my problems with it that I do think readers should keep in mind, but overall I think this book is really important and will leave you with a lot to think about.