Books Like Yellowface

Why Each Pick

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

For a narrator who lies his way into a world he envies. Richard invents a more glamorous background to fit in with a circle of elite classics students, then tells us, years later, how they came to kill one of their own. Like June, he is clever, self-justifying and hard to trust. Tartt's novel is a slow, literary mystery at 559 pages, darker and more atmospheric than Yellowface's quick satire.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

For unreliable narrators and a public trial by media. When Amy Dunne disappears, her husband Nick becomes a suspect in the press while her diary tells another story. Like Yellowface, it is gripping because you can't quite believe the person talking, and it skewers how the public picks villains. It is a crime thriller about a marriage, not the book world, and more violent.

Verity by Colleen Hoover

The closest match in setup: a struggling writer takes over another author's work. Lowen is hired to finish a bestselling series by the injured Verity Crawford and finds a hidden manuscript full of disturbing confessions. Like Yellowface, it is about who controls a story and what one manuscript can do. Hoover writes a gothic thriller rather than satire, with graphic sex and violence, including harm to children.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

For ambition, credit and envy between creative friends. Sam and Sadie build video games together for thirty years, and the question of who gets the credit strains everything between them. It shares Yellowface's interest in creative work, fame and Asian American identity, but it is warm where Kuang is acid, and its people are worth rooting for.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

For a fight over who gets to tell a life story. Reclusive film star Evelyn Hugo chooses an unknown magazine writer to hear the truth about her career and marriages, and both women have their reasons. Like Yellowface, it is about the gap between a public image and what really happened. It is glamorous and emotional rather than satirical. Content note: domestic abuse.

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

The classic story of a secret rotting behind a beautiful public face. Dorian stays young and admired while his hidden portrait records every cruelty. June's stolen manuscript works the same way: the success is real, and so is the thing she can't let anyone see. Wilde's novel is short, at 254 pages, witty and gothic, about art and vanity rather than publishing.

Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry

For two writers competing for the same book, in a much lighter key. Alice and Hayden each get a month to win the job of writing a reclusive heiress's biography. It shares Yellowface's look at how writers compete and who gets to tell someone else's story, but it is a rom-com with a family saga inside it, and nobody steals anything.

Babel by R. F. Kuang

Kuang's earlier novel, for readers who want her ideas without June's company. An orphan from Canton trains as a translator at an Oxford institute whose magic powers the British Empire, and slowly sees what his work is used for. It shares Yellowface's anger about who profits from other people's stories, but it is a 560-page fantasy about colonialism with footnotes, not a satire.