[Subdue] Yellowface by R.F. Kuang 3 stars

[Sue]

I wanted to like this book.

June Hayward, aka Juniper Song, is a struggling author. Her debut book was not a success, and no publishing houses are interested in her follow-up efforts. Her agent barely returns her phone calls.

June's friend/rival Athena Liu is her polar opposite. A wildly successful debut novel leads to more and more success.

When Athena dies horribly, June ends up in possession of Athena's latest unfinished manuscript.

June decides to perform some re-writing on the manuscript and present it as her own work.

What comes next is a dual track of fantastic success for June along side public accusations of plagiarism, cultural appropriation and even some accusations of murder.

The book carries along at a good clip but the last quarter of the book is spent entirely inside June's thoughts as her life and emotional health spiral out of control.

The main character June is absolutely despicable. I'm OK with an unlikable main character, but Athena wasn't much better. In fact there seem to be no redeemable characters in the entire book. There was not one single person I was rooting for, and especially not June.

There were also some odd choppy characters who suddenly appeared mid-book, like Athena's ex-boyfriend. And while I'm not opposed to political statements in novels, the author's reflexive anti-Trump rants are 100% out of place in this book and add nothing to the story.

[Hannah]

Thanks for the review. I definitely liked it better than you did, but I did agree with you about the sudden introduction of characters.