Ahh, a Reese’s Book Club pick!
Here I am in the middle of filming season two of The Pitt, and I’m looking for another book to read on set. I’ve gone through about 7 or 8 books by now, and another fellow background actor friend (Connie, thank you) just finished reading this one after I read Crying In H-Mart and handed it off to me. She wasn’t thrilled, but she enjoyed it. I sifted through the first few pages and, I’ve got to say, the beginning premise got me intrigued. Why is this girl so obsessed? I thought. Only later to find out… maybe the joke’s on all of us?
Author R.F. Kuang seems to be a popular young female Asian-American author nowadays, famous for being a Yale graduate and so esteemed and prestigious and well-researched (is the book semi-autobiographical?). In any case, you can read my initial thoughts below. Let me know if you’ve picked this one up, and what you thought as well!
My Goodreads review:
This book is so annoying. And that’s the whole point.
The main protagonist is an annoying, jealous, anxiety-ridden white female author who steals the work of her successful, pretty and beloved Asian peer… and then it spirals absolutely out of control. To the point where you just want to stop reading out of pure annoyance. But then you want to get to the end, to see where it goes, to see how the world reacts to her anxiety-ridden success that comes with plagiarizing, and all the guilt and horror and ghostly apparitions she experiences induced with all that anxiety of making a bad choice from the very start.
This wasn’t one of my favorite reads. But I’m glad I got through it. The author/protagonist (lines can blur?) is a self-aware writer who is not afraid of making fun of herself… and all of publishing in general. I was mostly interested in hearing how the publishing industry works, how it is purely entertainment at the end of the day, and all they want is that “hot young thing” and “diversity pick.” From her PR team to the publishing team and her editors and agents and people involved in a book deal, navigating that part was the most interesting part for me. The girl on girl trivialities of the main story were entertaining, but I couldn’t wait for it to be over! lol.
The book goes through the perils of social media cyber bullying and all the unhealthy attachments people seem to have towards it… To see the protagonist suffering through it all made me feel so annoyed. Why does she get so sucked into this all? … Perhaps I’m just not that interested in it all, but I guess that was the whole point of the story anyway? We’re supposed to be annoyed by her.
After some moments to think about it, it is quite a tragically funny story. Yellowface? That’s inherently racist. And the whole story is about a white girl trying not to be racist about stealing and writing a story about a race that is not her own. We try to sympathize with her and her trials and tribulations and constant suffering she puts herself through for her bad choices, but at the end of the day… she is who she is, and the choices she makes are all no fault but her own, and that is just so annoying. The empath in me wants to feel for her, for how she always felt in the shadows and never good enough, could never gain the riches and validation from her work and art we all naturally want to feel… the ending seems as if she had it coming for her. But I also wanted her to somehow get away with writing her own tale of it all.
I guess I would’ve liked for a redemptive ending, but perhaps that is just the optimist in me. And that doesn’t always win.
I was initially annoyed after reading this, but now I can just laugh at it and appreciate the story RFK made for us, especially us other Asian-American readers/writers out there, living in this modern world. This book is so goddamn funny, because the protagonist is just so pathetic, I cannot believe the anxiety she puts herself through! lol. Entertaining, nonetheless.
Read from: Nov 25, 2025 – Dec 16, 2025
beauty within 