Yellowface

I like the premise, the plot, the narrator and the discussion about cultural appropriation. The writing flows nicely. The pop culture references and the tweets were fun at the start too, but eventually it got too repetitive for my taste. I get that the main character was spiraling, but it felt tedious towards the end. At times, the villain-ness of the main character felt too heavy-handed, verging on rage-bait (or was it just too close to home?). And the ending didn't do the book justice.

This is a change of pace from the author's other work and it feels somewhat self-referential, but through which character? The story had me hooked, even though the protagonist, if you can call her that, is not exactly sympathetic, and I feel like I've met that person, but after a while, I feel like I could be that person, and everyone in publishing sucks, anyway. Which is the general message I'm getting (in a more clever and entertaining format than all my complaints about the one computer book I published).

No idea how to review this. It was like being unable to look away from a car crash.

I loved Kuang's fantasy work, so I was pleased when this was a gripping read. Not sure on the content / messaging as a satire. This book covers many topics and I feel uneducated on so much of it.

Interesting insight into being an author and into publishing especially in today's world of social media and "cancel culture"

This feels like every publishing twitter drama distilled into a single novel.