Rating: 4.7/5

Writing is the closest thing we have to real magic. Writing is creating something out of nothing, is opening doors to other lands. Writing gives you power to shape your own world when the real one hurts too much.

I didn’t pick up YellowFace intending to race through it.

But some books don’t let you linger.

They insist.

I read Yellowface in two days — not because it was light or comforting, but because it created a low, persistent tension that followed me even when the book was closed. The kind that hums in the background while you make tea. The kind that makes you reopen a chapter just to sit with a sentence a little longer.

What I Expected

A sharp, buzzy literary thriller.

A story about publishing, ambition, and appropriation.

Something fast, clever, and topical.

What I Actually Got

A mirror.

Yellowface isn’t just about plagiarism or the publishing industry. It’s about self-justification. About the stories we tell ourselves when we want something badly enough. About how easy it is to believe we are misunderstood — and how difficult it is to sit with the possibility that we are simply wrong.

Reading as Discomfort

The protagonist, June, is not someone you root for. But she is someone you recognize.

What unsettled me most wasn’t her initial decision — it was everything that came after. The rationalizations. The quiet reframing. The way one small choice grows layers, explanations, defenses. How quickly clarity blurs once success enters the room.

This is where the book slowed me down.

I found myself pausing not to admire the prose, but to notice my own reactions:

  • Why did this justification feel familiar?
  • Where have I seen this pattern — in work, online spaces, even in myself?
  • At what point does silence become complicity?

The Publishing World as a Backdrop, Not the Point

Yes, Yellowface skewers the publishing industry – its performative diversity, its appetite for controversy, its reliance on optics. But those details felt secondary to the quieter question running underneath:

Who gets to tell a story – and who decides when it’s “enough”?

Kuang doesn’t offer clean answers. Instead, she lets discomfort accumulate. She allows the noise of social media, praise, backlash, and fear to blur into something exhausting and inescapable – much like real life.

Why This Book Stayed With Me

Long after I finished, I kept thinking about how quickly attention hardens into identity. How being seen – even briefly – can become something we defend at all costs.

This wasn’t a book I loved in a warm way.

It was a book that refused to be tidy.

And I think that’s why it worked.

Final Reflection

Yellowface is a page-turner, yes.

But it’s also a reminder of why I read slowly, by choice, most mornings.

Because some stories aren’t meant to be consumed — they’re meant to interrupt.

This reading note is part of my quiet reading practice.