Well hello!
Welcome back to Free-view, my spoiler-free book review series! It’s been a few months, but I’ve been busy. Life update: if you’ve read some of my past posts, you know I myself am a writer, having written two novels since March 2023. With my second full-length novel, QUEENMAKER, I’ve been getting lots of interest! Recently, I’ve been accepted as a mentee through the Round Table Mentor program! My mentor is the wonderful DeAndra Davis, and I can’t wait to see how much info I can soak up from her about this brutal writing industry I’ve subjected myself to.
Reiterating the fact that I’m a writer who’s beginning to see success in my own fledgling career is necessary for today’s Free-view, because the book on the examination table today is R.F. Kuang’s Yellowface! This is an Adult contemporary novel centered on a woman named Juniper “June” Hayward. June and her friend Athena Liu are both writers with agents, published work, and established careers, but Athena has seen far more success with her career. So when Athena dies at her apartment while June is there to witness it, June, who has long been jealous of her friend, steals her current manuscript and works to pass it off as her own. June is a white woman, so she rebrands as Juniper Song to make herself sound more Asian, since Athena’s unfinished work was about Chinese laborers. Things get hectic from here as June struggles to contain her secret while reveling in the success of “her” new book.
Yellowface was a quick read for me, which is usually a good thing. If I love a book, I could read it in one sitting; no more than three days, max. Yellowface took me three days on the dot. So that should mean I loved it, right?
Right?
Well…not completely. I liked it, sure, but I have two major hangups with this novel that are preventing me from being able to say I loved it. I’ll circle back to those hangups later. First, I want to tell you why I was able to read it so quickly if I seem to have some issues with it; the pros, essentially. Pro #1 is that it was very well-written. Recently, I read a book that was very poorly written, and I struggled to get through it. Your story can be excellent, but if I can’t vibe with your writing, I’ll limp to the finish line. From a pure syntax and verbiage level, that wasn’t an issue with Yellowface.
Pro #2 is that the story itself was pretty compelling, mostly. Up until somewhere around the halfway point, I was super engaged. It was interesting to see everything unfold, especially in a book about the publishing industry. As a writer, it was fairly illuminating. I know R.F. Kuang was already a very established writer before writing Yellowface, so her depictions of life as a successful writer were probably quite accurate. It was also fascinating to get a glimpse into the psyche of someone like June, clearly meant to be a commentary on the socially ignorant white liberal woman.
So what didn’t I like then? Listen, I went into this book having heard a lot about it, and it came out shortly after I finished my first manuscript, THE NEXT WORLD. I knew it was about the publishing industry, so it was always something I knew I’d get around to reading as soon as I could. I expected it to be good, since I’d only heard good things.
But I quickly encountered a problem, and it’s a hard bump to get over for me. From about page 2, I didn’t like June, the main character. I never found a single thing about her to like. I’m a huge fan of imperfect protagonists and morally gray characters (see my Evelyn Hugo review), but I do still need to like someeeeething about them. It was hard for me to get invested in June in any way except praying on her downfall, and I don’t enjoy reading books just to see the main character fail. I want to root for them on some level! I didn’t seek out any redemption arc or happy ending for her. I wasn’t looking for that. This is the first book I’ve read in quite some time where I absolutely despised the MC, and this book solidified for me that I just cannot overcome unlikable MC’s with zero redeeming qualities.
And now, my other problem. It’s slightly less of a problem, but a problem nonetheless, and it has awakened a giant in me that will never go back to sleep.
The narrative style read so much like R.F. Kuang using this unlikable main character to not-so-subtly complain about the “Twitterati,” a term constantly used by June to describe a mob of angry people attacking her on the app formerly known as Twitter. At times, it felt like Kuang slipped into her own stream of consciousness while she was writing this novel and started blending June’s thoughts with her own. This is sometimes unavoidable in books about certain themes, but at times, I couldn’t tell whether June was mad at the woke mob, or R.F. Kuang was.
That last problem has helped me identify this new giant that lives within me, and it’s a problem I’ll have to reckon with every time I read a new book. Yellowface wasn’t the first book I’d read since finishing QUEENMAKER, but it was the one that helped me realize that something’s wrong.
I’m a writer now. I’ve got writer brain. Reading a book with writer brain is a different beast. I read everything as if I’m a beta reader. It’s hard to read to enjoy – now I’m reading to dissect. HOW DO I TURN THIS OFF? Without writer brain, I don’t think I would’ve had the second problem. I’d probably be rating this book higher. But life is unfair.
So, in summary: in pursuit of my dream, I’ve broken my brain, and it’s made me pickier as a reader. Yay?
It’s fascinating to be along for a ride like Yellowface, but I needed likability. I craved something to root for. I’ve rooted for villains before, it can be done. But it didn’t happen this time. That’s not to say I think R.F. Kuang wanted readers to root for June…but I certainly didn’t. Maybe that makes me part of the Twitterati.
I know this is probably an unpopular opinion. I can confront the reasons why I’ve landed on this opinion, and I’m just as mad about it as you may be. I wanted to love it. I still recommend you read it if you haven’t. But I won’t lie to you, or to me.
YELLOWFACE by R.F. Kuang – Rating: 3/5 Stars
readreaming 