Category: Thriller

Title: Yellowface
Author: R.F. Kuang
Genre: Contemporary, Thriller
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Source: Publisher
Format: Paperback arc
Release Date: May 16, 2023
Rating: ★★★★★

Goodreads Synopsis:

What’s the harm in a pseudonym? New York Times bestselling sensation Juniper Song is not who she says she is, she didn’t write the book she claims she wrote, and she is most certainly not Asian American–in this chilling and hilariously cutting novel from R. F. Kuang.

Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars: same year at Yale, same debut year in publishing. But Athena’s a cross-genre literary darling, and June didn’t even get a paperback release. Nobody 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 to the British and French war efforts 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? Doesn’t this piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller? 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.

With its totally immersive first-person voice, Yellowface takes on questions of diversity, racism, and cultural appropriation not only in the publishing industry but the persistent erasure of Asian-American voices and history by Western white society. R. F. Kuang’s novel is timely, razor-sharp, and eminently readable.

Review:

June Hayward and Athena Liu went to Yale together and became authors, debuting in the same year. Athena became an award-winning author, while June’s debut didn’t even get a second publication in paperback. When Athena dies in a freak accident in front of June, June takes the secret manuscript Athena has just completed. June can tell immediately this manuscript about Chinese laborers in WWI is a masterpiece, so she edits it a little and sends it to her agent under her own name. Her publisher rebrands her as June Song and publishes the book. However, people start to see similarities between Athena’s work and June’s new novel. People on social media starts asking questions about why June wrote about a heritage that does not belong to her. June has to fight against this criticism while protecting her secret from the looming ghost of Athena. 

This book was amazing. It is an intriguing look at publishing, with references to real events that have happened in the industry. There was a lot more to the plot than was in the synopsis, but I don’t want to give anything away. One important point this story makes is about censorship and who has the right to tell a story. June was a white woman who published a book about Chinese heritage (though she didn’t write it) and at the same time the author of Yellowface is a Chinese-American woman who has written a book with a white woman as the main character. I loved the irony of that. Of course, authors don’t need to experience everything that they write about (murder mystery writers aren’t murderers), but there are exceptions to that. Though censorship can be problematic, it is more problematic to take the place of someone’s voice to tell their own cultural story. 

I highly recommend Yellowface for writers and anyone interested in publishing!

Thank you HarperCollins Canada for sending me a copy of this book. 

Content warnings: racism, cyberbullying, gaslighting, sudden death, choking, mentions of suicide, death of parent, broken bones

What to read next:

Babel by R.F. Kuang

Have you read Yellowface? What did you think of it?

Title: How to Kill Men and Get Away With It
Author: Katy Brent
Genre: Contemporary, Thriller
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Source: Publisher via NetGalley
Format: Ebook
Release Date: April 11, 2023
Rating: ★★★★★

Goodreads Synopsis:

Meet Kitty Collins.

FRIEND. LOVER. KILLER.

He was following me. That guy from the nightclub who wouldn’t leave me alone.

I hadn’t intended to kill him of course. But I wasn’t displeased when I did and, despite the mess I made, I appeared to get away with it.

That’s where my addiction started…

I’ve got a taste for revenge and quite frankly, I’m killing it.

A deliciously dark, hilariously twisted story about friendship, love, and murder. Fans of My Sister the Serial Killer, How to Kill Your Family and Killing Eve will love this wickedly clever novel!

Review:

Kitty Collins is a social media influencer and an heiress to her family’s abattoir. One night after leaving a club with her friends, a guy from the club follows her home. He’s angry that she rejected him, and he dies in a freak accident. Now that Kitty’s had a taste of revenge, she wants to avenge every girl who’s been attacked by a guy. Kitty goes searching for the awful men who target young women on dating apps, but when she takes it too far, she has to be careful that she doesn’t get caught. 

This was such a fun and twisty story. I’m sure almost every woman has had an interaction with a man that made her uncomfortable, or worse. Kitty specifically targeted the men who were preying on women, and she used creative ways of disposing of them. By killing these men, she was saving many women from being attacked by them in the future. She was carrying out justice, though if she got caught, she would be in trouble. Even though she had become a serial killer, I kept hoping that she wouldn’t get caught, because she was really helping all women who could potentially be attacked by these men. 

How to Kill Men and Get Away With It is a funny and suspenseful thriller!

Thank you HarperCollins Canada for providing a digital copy of this book. 

Content warnings: murder, rape (off page and described), assault, animal abuse, animal death, slaughterhouse, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, drug overdose

What to read next:

My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

Have you read How to Kill Men and Get Away With It? What did you think of it?

Title: A Death at the Party
Author: Amy Stuart
Genre: Thriller, Contemporary
Publisher: Simon and Schuster Canada
Source: Publisher
Format: Paperback
Release Date: March 7, 2023
Rating: ★★★★★

Goodreads Synopsis:

In this tense, spellbinding thriller set over the course of a single day, a woman prepares for a party that goes dreadfully wrong—for fans of Ashley Audrain and Lisa Jewell.

Nadine Walsh’s summer garden party is in full swing. The neighbors all have cocktails, the catered food is exquisite—everything’s going according to plan.

But Nadine—devoted wife, loving mother, and doting daughter—finds herself standing over a dead body in her basement while her guests clink glasses upstairs. What happened? How did it come to this?

Rewind to that morning, when Nadine is in her kitchen, making last-minute preparations before she welcomes more than a hundred guests to her home to celebrate her mother’s birthday. But her husband is of little help to her, her two grown children are consumed with their own concerns, and her mother—only her mother knows that today isn’t just a birthday party. It marks another anniversary as well.

Still, Nadine will focus just on tonight. Everyone deserves a celebration after the year they’ve had. A chance for fun. A chance to forget. But it’s hard to forget when Nadine’s head is swirling with secrets, haunting memories, and concerns about what might happen when her guests unite.

Review:

Nadine Walsh is hosting a sixtieth birthday party for her mother, the bestselling author Marilyn Millay. The hundred guest party is a success, with drinks flowing, beautiful decor, and delicious food. However, at the end of the party, Nadine is left standing over a body in her basement. This story follows the entire day leading up to the party, which Nadine spends rehashing events from her mother’s birthday party thirty years earlier when her aunt Colleen was found dead, up until the party with another dead body. 

This story was thrilling and fast paced. There were loads of hints of dark secrets to come in the first chapters. Everyone had secrets in their small community, and everyone was connected in some way. The story opens with Nadine standing over a dying man at the end of the party, but we don’t know who he is yet. There were so many possibilities as to who he could be that I was still guessing until the end. 

My only critique is that I want to know what happens next! I thought the story would still have a couple of more chapters when it ended. I would love to hear what happened after that final chapter. 

A Death at the Party is a great new thriller!

Thank you Simon and Schuster Canada and Tandem Collective for sending me a copy of this book. 

Content warnings: death, death of teenager, drugging, suggestion of sexual assault, mention of child pornography, extramarital affair

What to read next:

The Golden Spoon by Jessa Maxwell

Have you read A Death at the Party? What did you think of it?

Title: The Writing Retreat
Author: Julia Bartz
Genre: Thriller, Contemporary
Publisher: Simon and Schuster Canada
Source: Publisher and Tandem Collective
Format: Paperback
Release Date: February 21, 2023
Rating: ★★★

Goodreads Synopsis:

A book deal to die for. 

Five attendees are selected for a month-long writing retreat at the remote estate of Roza Vallo, the controversial high priestess of feminist horror. Alex, a struggling writer, is thrilled.

Upon arrival, they discover they must complete an entire novel from scratch, and the best one will receive a seven-figure publishing deal. Alex’s long-extinguished dream now seems within reach.

But then the women begin to die.

Trapped, terrified yet still desperately writing, it is clear there is more than a publishing deal at stake at Blackbriar Estate. Alex must confront her own demons – and finish her novel – to save herself.

This unhinged, propulsive, claustrophobic closed-door thriller will pull you in and spit you out…

Review:

Bestselling author Roza Vallo hosts a writing retreat at her remote estate for aspiring writers under thirty-years-old. When Alex finds out that she’s been chosen for this exclusive retreat, she’s excited but there’s a problem. She’s had writer’s block for a year. On top of that, her ex-best friend, who she had a fight with a year before, has also been chosen to go to the retreat. The experience isn’t what they expected. Roza wants them to each write a complete novel, writing 3,000 words a day to complete it in a month. However, the women begin to feel trapped, and strange things start happening. It isn’t just their writing careers that are at stake, but their lives as well. 

I loved the premise of this book. It would be a dream come true for me to go to a writing retreat with my favourite author! I can’t imagine having the privilege of doing that. The thriller aspects of this story were good, but there were some strange scenes. 

The strange scenes involved hallucinations and dreams. It gave the story a bit of a fantasy side, which disrupted the intense thriller. There were also some references to homosexuality and race in publishing that didn’t really make the impact they should have. It felt like some attempted representation that was thrown into the story without a purpose or without fully making a statement. 

The Writing Retreat was an intense and unusual thriller. 

Thank you Simon and Schuster Canada and Tandem Collective for providing a copy of this book.

What to read next:

The Sanatorium by Sarah Pearse

Have you read The Writing Retreat? What did you think of it?