You know that antsy feeling you get when you're watching TV and a character is doing something unbelievably horrible? That's what it was like reading Yellowface by R.F. Kuang, our #ReadWithMC June pick. It follows two "friends" who are both writers with vastly different career success: Athena Liu has achieved commercial literary success with multiple book deals, while June Hayward didn't even get a paperback release, which she chalks up to not being "diverse" enough. When Athena dies in a freak accident, June takes the opportunity to steal Athena's unfinished manuscript and release it as her own under a new ambiguously ethnic penname. June finds success overnight, but soon she finds herself facing the repercussions of her actions.
This novel was a lot of things: thought-provoking, engaging, satirical, and, at times, uncomfortable. As such, #ReadWithMC readers had plenty to say, especially about the main character and narrator June. "At the end of the day with June, her actions were reprehensible and disgusting, so to be in the passenger seat while she made decisions was really interesting," wrote @sonja_reads. Another reader @whast.sophie.reading had a bit of sympathy for June writing, "I mean, I both liked and hated June and Athena. It takes a special kind of mastery to create an awful character, yet have someone feel sorry for them."
