The publishing industry is a competitive industry, containing both big and small publishing houses. At least 77% of all best-selling hardcover and paperback books in the US are distributed by the “Big Five” publishing houses, including Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, and Macmillan. Globally the book publishing industry is worth around 103 billion dollars. Many authors who don’t publish at one of the “big houses” choose to self-publish, or publish with a smaller company. Moreover, with a surplus of different writers and companies, plagiarism in the publishing industry happens, and accusations are rare and even more rare to prove that they are true.
Furthermore, many people throughout the United States and the world dream of one day becoming successful writers through their own merit and storytelling. Along with their attempts, many face either success or failure to get their book published and marketed enough to achieve high sales. How far would you go for success? What if you were unsuccessful in putting your ideas out into the world? Would you steal someone else’s ideas?
Official Synopsis: Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars. But Athena’s a literary darling. June Hayward is literally nobody. Who wants stories about basic white girls, June thinks. So when June witnesses Athena’s death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse: she steals Athena’s just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers during World War I. So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song-complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? Doesn’t this piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller is? That’s what June claims, and the New York Times bestseller list seems to agree. But June can’t get away from Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens to bring June’s (stolen) success down around her. As June races to protect her secret, she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.
Genre: Fiction, Thriller, Contemporary
Important Characters: June Hayward (Main character), Athena Liu
My review: 5/5: This book is easily five stars. The story has a morally ambiguous main character, and steps foot into a touchy part of the publishing industry, that being plagiarism. This story wasn’t the type of story where you instantly felt a connection with the main character, but rather a story where you question the decisions and actions that the main character might make to reach her goal. I really enjoyed that the book brought to light the internalized racism and plagiarism that is found deep within the publishing industry. Also touches on deep-rooted jealousy, guilt, and grief that can be found in long-standing friendships.
Author Reviews:
“This is a great read. Cime, satire, horror, paranoia, questions of cultural appropriation. Plenty of nasty social media pile-ons, too. But, basically, just a great story. Hard to put down, harder to forget.” – Stephen King
“At once a brilliant satire that mixes horror and humor; a nuanced exploration of race, heritage, identity, and diversity in publishing; and an honest look at the hell that is social media, this might just be Kuang’s best.” -Boston Globe
About the Author: Rebecca F. Kuang is the #1 New York Times and #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of the Poppy War trilogy, Babel: An Arcane History, and Yellowface. Her work has won the Nebula, Locus, Crawford, and British Book Awards. A Marshall Scholar, she has an MPhil in Chinese Studies from Cambridge and an MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies from Oxford. She is now pursuing a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale, where she studies diaspora, contemporary Sinophone literature, and Asian American literature.
Why you might want to read this book:
-Morally ambiguous main character
-Brings to light the effects of racism in the publishing industry
-Shows the effects of social media
-Shows just how far someone would go for fame and success
How far would you go for success? June Hayward plans to commit plagiarism and steal the ideas of her late friend and successful author Athena Liu, in order to achieve her dream of becoming a successful author. Would you steal someone else’s success in order to elevate your own?
My Favorite Quotes:
“Writing is the closest thing we have to real magic. Writing is creating something out of nothing, and opening doors to other lands. Writing gives you power to shape your own world when the real one hurts too much”
“What more can we want as writers than such immortality? Don’t ghosts just want to be remembered?”
“But the best revenge is to thrive”
“People always describe jealousy as this sharp, green, venomous thing. Unfounded, vinegary, mean-spirited. But I’ve found that jealousy, to writers, feels more like fear. Jealousy is the spike in my heart rate when I glimpse news of Athena’s success on Twitter-another book contract, award nominations, special editions, foreign rights deals. Jealousy is constantly comparing myself to her and coming up short; is panicking that i’m not writing well enough or fast enough, that I am not, and never will be, enough.”
“‘The truth is fluid, there is always another way to spin the story.”
