Yellowface (Rebecca F. Kuang) - After a long time, a book I could not put down!

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

This is the book that renews my faith in new age bestselling authors and new titles hitting the market. I started it last evening and finished it late night. I literally could not put it down (and not just in a manner of speaking!). For once a book lived up to its Instagram hype. 

Yellowface is about Juniper Howard (a 27year old white woman from Philly) and her ambition and struggle to become a best selling author. She is friends with Athena Ling En Liu, a classmate from Yale with the same ambitions are Junie. Only Athena who has everything going for her (born rich, with looks and talent to match and the diversity tag that makes it all easy), has made it big with bestselling titles to her name, book advances and a Netflix deal. While Junie is still struggling to meet rent. Athena dies in a freak accident leaving Junie with a manuscript nobody knows about and a chance at crazy success. From here on, Junie's life changes - she becomes Juniper Song, author of the bestseller "The Last Front" and the new star on the publishing horizon.   

But what goes around comes around. And while Junie struggles to justify to herself how "The Last Front" is her baby as well (adopted and moulded by her, even if not birthed), how she deserves every bit of the success that's coming her way, how all this is only fair give her past with Athena...... there are others who are not going to let her boat float. At every turn, when she feels she has put her past behind and can breathe easy, she is haunted by the ghosts of the past.    

Yellowface is set in the world of publishing - it revolves around the struggle authors go through, the insane demands on them, the intense social media scrutiny, and the crazy competitive world they live in. We are passive consumers of the ultimate output but are often ignorant of the sweat, blood and tears that go into the making of the book. It is a lonely career, where people who understand your struggles are also your biggest competition and hence can never be trusted. The social media world is unforgiving, with Twitter and Instagram sitting in judgement every second of the day. Strike First Strike Hard No Mercy (apologies to Karate Kid and Kobra Kai) seems to be the best way to describe the unforgiving world of social media where nothing is real but everything somehow still is. 

The references to Chinese pop culture got me really excited - The Untamed (one of the best from the Wuxia series) has a huge huge fan following (me included). The Last Front is a book within the book (a sort of literary Inception) and made me do some Wiki search about the 1,40,000 workers recruited as "Chinese Labour Corps, a force of workers recruited by the British government in the First WW to free troops for front line duty by performing support work and manual labour". After the War was over, some made it back home, many didn't. If really written, I would pre-order this historical fiction book and wait for it.    

Yellowface will not be just a fad - it will stand the trial of times and be read and appreciated even 20 years later.

Link to Amazon: https://amzn.in/d/0ezQD4iX