Yellowface (2023) written by R. F. Kuang is a satire of racial diversity in the publishing industry as well as a metafiction about social media, particularly Twitter.

Super popular, it sounded right up my alley.

The first quarter of the book was engaging. An interesting plot.

June Hayward, an unsuccessful young author, finds herself the only witness to the death of her former classmate and casual friend, Athena Liu, a Chinese-American author who is an industry darling.

She decides to position herself as best friend of the author and begins to edit and re-write Athena’s manuscript, a novel about Chinese laborers in World War I.

As she changes more and more of the draft, June begins to feel ownership over the novel and decides to publish it as her original work.  …

It started to drag. Too much doom scrolling on Twitter. Too repetitious.

Finally — I quit about half way through the book.