The book in one sentence: An unsuccessful writer (June Hayward) sees her superstar author friend (Athena Liu) die and while being devastated, still cannot miss the chance to steal the freshly deceased’s unfinished manuscript.

For all who love dark humor and unconventional storytelling.

A must-read, because this story is important. It is intelligent. And it most definitely offers a lot of fun.

It is quite risky to tell a story from the villains point of view. And June Hayward is far away from being a „likeable villain“. However, despite all of her terrible deeds, I still, at times, felt really sorry for her. Which makes the whole message of this book even more important: Because, what we have here is a story about the exploitative hell of the publishing industry and how cultural appropriation factors into that.

This description might lead to the assumption that this book is really somber and serious in its‘ tone, but you could not be more mistaken with that: The writing is face-paced, witty and has a good amount of (dark) humor. So, even if you do not want to reflect about the several layers of the literary societal critique, you can simply have a lot of fun reading this exhilarating story (lots of respect for Kuang for writing an enjoyable book with so few likeable characters).

Yours,

Katja