Yellowface - R.F. Kuang - Top Book Pick!

Fiction/Satire

Rating: 9/10

Juniper Song is unabashed liar. Flat out, bald faced, deluded and narcissistic, she even manages to fool herself.

She is also a fledging writer, ravenous with ambition. When her bestselling author friend Athena chokes to death one night when they are hanging at her fancy schmancy apartment, Juniper steals her just-finished masterpiece. A masterpiece she hasn’t whispered a thing about to anyone.

June claims it as her own, sloughing off her culpability, I mean she had to do a lot of editing so now it’s really hers, right? And publishing already picked Athena has their darling, lavishing her with praise and money. Now it’s her turn, right? Who said she wasn’t a good storyteller.

When someone on social media calls her out as a plagiarist and a thief, sending her into a tizzy, somehow she finds herself on the other side, unscathed. So, she’s not going to do it again, right?

When she can’t bear seeing herself trend towards irrelevance, she dips back into her dead friends’ notes. The second accusation is much harder to refute, but somehow, she talks her way out of it. That is, until she doesn’t.

June is a privileged white woman whose ability to assert herself as the victim at every turn of this story is fascinating and provocative.

Her moral ambiguity is the driving force of this novel. And this author writes it with deft precision, scathing insight, and savvy wit.

Book Pairing(s):The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris, The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz, Disorientation by Elaine Hsieh Chou