Yellowface is a contemporary tale of two young women writers. Athena is Asian American and June is white and they forge a friendship spanning their college years until their late twenties.

Athena seemingly has it all, success and acclaim as a writer, a Netflix deal and a stunning apartment. While June with one unsuccessful published book under her belt, is struggling to gain any interest from her agent for a further book.

June is the only one present when Athena dies and takes the opportunity to do something with Athena’s unpublished and unseen manuscript, a first draft about Chinese labourer’s being recruited to the war effort in Europe. She begins reworking it, rewriting, and getting into a publishable state ostensibly as a tribute to her friend. But when the book is published under her new penname which sounds surprisingly Asian, a battle of conscious and guilt begins. Put that together with the fact that she is attacked in social media platforms and questioned about the authenticity of the writing and you have a manic story with themes of cancel culture, jealousy and the ugliness of twitter trolls.

I began reading this novel just as I was launching my own book, Sugar Creek and it probably wasn’t the right book to be reading at the time. The way Yellowface begins would put anyone off writing and looking to publish a book – ever! Kuang is brutal in her portrayal of the publishing industry and from my experience, she’s probably not too far off. Yet it was so fascinating that I couldn’t put it down.

Kuang admirably tackles themes of plagiarism and cultural appropriation, the mob mentality of negative social media and the effect on mental health. But it’s also a touching story of grief, vulnerability and the strength of friendship.

June is not a particularly likeable character but there were times when I was sympathetic despite being pulled into the dilemma of her theft and at other times so judgmental that even I was surprised. That’s what this book does to you as the reader is constantly asking themselves, what would you do?

Check this one out.