Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
Started 2026 with bestseller ‘Yellowface’. I was fighting between 3 stars and 4 (out of 5), and I tend to round up rather than down. So fine… four stars it is, for R.F. Kuang writing a book that’s nothing like her debut trilogy (The Poppy War books) and giving readers a wholly new, deeply unlikable protagonist: a plagiarist, no less, with virtually no redeeming qualities or talents, except for being an excellent gaslighter. And who does she gaslight best? Herself.
‘Yellowface’ is all about June Hayward, a struggling white author stealing a rough draft of a historical fiction book written by Athena Liu, her famous Asian-American author friend… after Athena dies in a freak accident. Athena was brilliant, successful, and well-established in the literary world. So can June, a white author, really get away by publishing a World War I story about Chinese laborers without raising eyebrows? So the primary mystery in ‘Yellowface’, if you want to call it that, is all about whether June can get away with her theft.
When accusations of plagiarism begin to swirl, June doubles down, reframing theft as inspiration. ‘Yellowface’ tracks her increasingly frantic efforts to control the narrative, revealing how easily self-deception can masquerade as moral reasoning. As the novel’s primary narrator, June wields complete control over how she is perceived, giving readers a front-row seat to her justifications.
As a character, June Hayward sometimes feels like two (or more) different people – she flits between manipulatively smart and obnoxiously dumb. She is racist, narcissistic, with a victim mentality, while also displaying symptoms of ‘white savior syndrome’. Whatever June lacks in literary talent, she more than makes up for in jealousy, narcissism, and an almost heroic commitment to self-denial.
June’s contradictory traits make ‘Yellowface’ both hilarious and frustrating, depending entirely on madam’s mood at any given page. For all her denial about the racial appropriation involved in stealing from an Asian American author, June also displays flashes of self-awareness, openly describing some of her own behaviour as erratic, even likening herself to a “Karen.” One such moment comes when she accosts a stranger on the street, mistaking her for someone else, only to be sharply reminded: “Not all Asians look the same.”
Kuang expertly captures the mental gymnastics of plagiarism, the way theft is reframed as tribute, inspiration, or labour. Stealing the bones of someone else’s work and building upon it becomes a form of creation rather than crime, at least in June’s mind. After all, if you’re never caught, who’s really harmed? That belief sustains her, until the possibility of exposure threatens to undo everything.
The most amusing bits of ‘Yellowface’ are the parts where the author displays how the publishing ecosystem works. Unreliable agents, temperamental editors, snobby authors, predictable awards, and of course, the ultimate pillar of the publishing world: the readers. June spends hours and hours going through Goodreads reviews, from the congratulatory 5 stars to the insulting 1 stars, throwing herself into the doomscrolling hell of internet judgment.
Most readers would probably want June to spectacularly fail by the end of ‘Yellowface’, the kind of downfall where someone mutters “payback is a bitch” over her wreckage. But that’s the thing… June is the anti-hero of this story. She is 100% unlikable, and I found myself rooting for her to be worse, to be shrewder, colder, smarter, and fully committed to her own monstrosity. If you’re served a manipulative, thieving bitch as a protagonist, you want them to lean into it completely.
Instead, June begins to lose her footing toward the end. She almost breaks. The climactic chapter closes on an open-ended note, clearly hinting that the June Hayward show is far from over. It’s a strong ending, one that some readers will hate and others will love, depending on which side you’re on: ‘Team June’ or ‘Team Ghost of Athena’.
As long as you don’t dwell too deep into June’s inconsistent personality (because I felt like the author’s voice overtakes June’s character in some moments), you will find Yellowface to be a very entertaining book. It tracks a failed author’s rise to fame, before fresh falls come knocking again.
Rating: 4 stars on 5.
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