A struggling white author sees an opportunity when her friend, a successful Chinese author, dies unexpectedly after a night of drinking, leaving behind an unfinished manuscript.  After reworking and filling in the missing gaps in the manuscript, the white author has a best seller on her hands, but when questions pop up online, she worries that she is found out.  When she publishes a second work, solely of her own imagination save a single paragraph that served as inspiration, she is found out, as her dead friend workshopped the paragraph at a workshop years prior.  After the dust settles, everyone seems to have moved on, but the ghosts of the past never do stay dead, do they?

R.F. Kuang’s Yellowface, the winner of the 2003 Goodreads Choice award for Best Fiction, was an interesting look at the publishing industry and the effects social media can have on writers used to existing in solitude.  I was enjoying it most of the way, but the ending fell flat for me.  Outside of this, I don’t know much about Kuang or her other work, so I don’t know if we will be seeing her back here again sometime.