i cant believe it took me so long to read this after all my friends recommended it to me so many times 😭😭 this was a sharp, cynical satire that makes you want to leap through the pages and punch june hayward (or, as she pseudonymises herself, 'juniper song') in the face. but at the same time, through her experiences, it raises a lot of questions that challenge our own views on cancel culture and calling out individuals, in a way that is striking and frustrating, because who would want to disagree with backlash against a woman who published her dead friend's manuscript? june hayward is undoubtedly a shitty, unlikeable person -- she is consumed by ber own ego, most of the time, and very much resembles the I'm Not Racist But... white woman that we are all exhaustingly familiar with. but, while it would've been easy to, kuang does not draw the lines between good and bad so clearly. much is left in the grey, to question and figure out just what exactly is wrong in what is done, whether what we are angry at is something that genuinely strikes a moral chord in us or whether we are angry simply because we should be. yes, june published athena's manuscript -- but she also filled in the substantial gaps leftover in the less-than first draft. is that somehow a mitigating factor to her plagiarism? or, yes, athena was a successful asian woman breaking through the glass ceiling of the publishing industry through her skill and hard work -- but is our sympathy for her diminished when we learn that she, too, seems to have profited from other people's pain? is it the same as what was done by june, in a way? where is the line drawn? this was a clever, critical exploration, and i am glad of its ambiguity, of the lack of moral lines drawn, because it perfectly demonstrates the fact it is not so black and white to decide whether or not someone should be 'cancelled'.

my only gripe: wasn't a fan of the climax. i just feel like it tried too hard to follow the pattern of other thriller novels which this book definitely is not. i think this could've worked really well without the 'who is behind this athena trolling' plotline trying to interweave itself through the -- in my opinion -- much more interesting exploration at hand, but honestly i enjoyed the rest too much to be that mad about it.