Yellowface

June Hayward, a young author who has only ever published one book before that kind of flopped and who has always been standing in the shadows of fellow author Athena Liu, sees her big opportunity to publish a phenomenal book when Athena dies all of a sudden and she steals the famous author’s latest manuscript.

No one knows what it is about or that it exists even, and it’s far from being ready to be published so June decides to finish it and make it her own. Her plans work out perfectly, she manages to get a great deal with a publisher and seeing the books potential, they help her make it the book of the season.

When June thinks that she actually made it without being caught and is living her best life, people start voicing doubts about her authorship. June needs to decide: is she going to admit, that the first draft of the story was written by Athena and possible lose all her earnings, or is she going to keep pretending like it is her original work?

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You won’t believe me how long I’ve been chasing a somewhat cheap copy of this book! I’ve been wanting to read it since I first picked it up at the bookstore, but no matter where I saw it, it was always like 20€… I was lucky at the London Heathrow Airport though!

It was by far not what I expected it to be, but I loved it!
I do get why a lot of people do not like it, but I ended up enjoying it a lot! The main character, June, is a deeply thought through character with realistic inner conflicts. In the beginning of the book I really liked her, then I didn’t, did again and then again did not. My final conclusion is that this girl is not quite sane, but made for a brilliant story of exploring borders, struggling for validation from others and self-realization!
What I especially liked about this book is the insight it offers into the world of publishing, as this is something you’re obviously kind of interested in as a booklover, but do not know all that much about.
I loved how the author talked about a lot of hot topics like mental health, racism as well as reversed racism, being a public figure and so on.

About one hundred pages into the book I suddenly lost interest in reading it, but when I finally picked it up again a couple of days later, I simply could not put it down until I finished reading it!

It’s brilliant how June manages to escape every situation now matter how hopeless it seems to be! The way she does this might not be the morally right thing to do, but most of the time I was on her side, as she pictured herself as the victim.

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Autor: Rebecca F. Kuang

Titel: Yellowface

Verlag: The Borough Press

Preis: ca. 10 £

Seitenzahl: 319

ISBN: 978-0-00-853278-9

Taschenbuch

Erscheinungsjahr: 2023

Bewertung: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐