PREMISE: Authors Juniper Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars. But Athena is a literary darling while June is a 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, stealing 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 own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? This piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller. That is what June believes, and The New York Times bestseller list agrees.

But June cannot escape Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens her stolen success. As she races to protect her secret she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.

I’m back on Goodreads for this one as I knew this caused some debate and where there’s debate, there’s bellends. Some colossal twat called Clive Williamstein wrote this elloquent diatribe:

“There are no people in this book. There are only “white people” “Asian people” and “cis-het people”. Because you know how everyone fits neatly into those categories and it tells you everything you need to know about them? When referencing or thinking about another human being, their race is the only real important thing to consider.

I hate the protagonist, and not for the reasons I’m supposed to. We are supposed to accept that this person believes in actual literal ghosts and makes decisions accordingly. Fuck off.

I’ll save you some time… white people are all bad, successful people are all women, dumb people are all men, Asian people are all awesome and hard done by. Feeling slightly guilty about being a piece of shit makes people believe in ghosts and attempt murder. The end”

Now, I’m all for people having their own opinions. As I’ve said in other reviews, all books are either liked or disliked…that’s okay…that’s how it works. But Clive then signed off his review with this beauty:

“Fuck this book and everyone who gave it 2 stars or more”

Which, for me, lends a completely different slant to his review. Whereas he might have come across as being someone who was trying to make a point about race (and this book certainly encourages people to do that), with that last sentence he now just comes across as an old, white, grumpy, argumentative, racist prick.

As for the book itself, I really enjoyed it and absolutely flew through it. It’s an entertaining story and fantastically, addictively well-written and that’s all I’m after from a book.