frances_frances's reviews
288 reviews

The illustrations and layout of this book are incredible. I loved the aesthetic. The story itself was so-so but I'm giving it 4 stars for the drawings and text layout.

I really wanted to like this anthology but it just didn't do it for me. The quality of writing was all over the place and while that's somewhat understandable for an anthology, it was too distracting for me personally. I also find it strange that at least a third of the essays are by the editor, Laura Kate Dale. Why didn't she just write another memoir? 

While it wasn't for me, I hope this book is useful, inspiring, and/or validating to other trans, nonbinary, and/or intersex readers.

Loved the detail in the illustrations  and enjoyed meeting each of the main characters. Very sweet portrayal of platonic love.

This is my second Heather Gudenkauf book, after The Overnight Guest, and while she's a good writer with a distinct voice, I've decided her books just aren't for me. Not a Sound is better than a lot of thrillers out there but it didn't particularly hook me.

One of the reasons I picked this book is because the main character is deaf. It's unusual for thrillers to feature characters who are in any way disabled. This aspect of the book was interesting to me and brought a much-needed disruption to the genre. I'm not deaf so I don't feel like I can really comment on the way deafness was presented in this book. I know Gudenkauf is deaf in one ear so I hope/assume she would have the insight and sensitivity necessary to write an authentic deaf person. I'm interested in the perspectives of deaf readers and how they received this book. 

Some aspects of the book that I didn't like:
* I was often bored by the frequent paragraph-long descriptions of buildings and of Mathias's (rather bland) history.
* There's also some unnecessarily detailed descriptions that took me out of the story. One was when Amelia assists Rachel Nava after she falls. We're told in great detail how the iv is administered and what her condition is. And as the climax of the story is ramping up, Gudenkauf takes the time to explain the benefits of snowshoeing...
* Amelia is constantly making unsafe and/or unethical decisions and frequently puts herself in physical danger. As the book went on, I had less and less patience for this. It felt like in general, a lot of characters make decisions that make zero sense and only happen to move the story along. I felt too aware of where Gudenkauf was trying to steer the reader.
* This highlights my next issue with the book: The mystery that the whole book revolves around wasn't particularly compelling or suspenseful. It felt formulaic and the red herrings weren't executed well. It felt like Gudenkauf had a lot of specific ideas she wanted to incorporate but less clarity about how and why the ideas fit together. 
* Amelia wasn't an intriguing character. Her dog is almost most interesting. Amelia's history with alcoholism fell flat for me. The progression, peak, and aftermath of her disorder didn't feel authentic to me. I can't say why exactly but I just didn't believe it.

I don't even know where to begin...But much of what I have to say has already been expressed by other reviewers so I'll keep this brief.

This book is not a thriller. The amount of detailed sex scenes was truly wild, almost comical. I ended up skipping through them as the book went on. It's fine for a book to be sexy, but it should been marketed as erotica (ie not a thriller!). But also I'm incredibly bored with, not to mention creeped out by, the "sexy thriller" genre. It usually ends up blurring the line between sex/desire and violence. Power is achieved through both sex and violence. This is rape culture!

The characters were flat and uninteresting. Jeremy was perfect to the point that it was annoyingly unrealistic. Verity was unknowable in a way that wasn't mysterious or clever, just poorly written. Lowen is also a nothing person. Nothing about the way she was written made me actually believe she herself was a writer. And her sleepwalking trauma was weird. I don't get what Hoover was trying to do there. Just felt lazy. Overall, the way trauma was written about came off as trauma porn. The characters are all defined by their trauma and Hoover revels in it.

Plot holes galore and an unsatisfying ending.

I could go on but it's all been said. This was my first and last Colleen Hoover book. 

 This book is hard to rate and review because there's so many ways to look at it. Yellowface attempts to grapple with a lot of nuanced, ever-changing issues and be funny and a bit creepy all at once. There's a lot I loved about this book but I can also understand how/why some readers might absolutely hate it. It's intentionally relentless and cringey. It delves deeply into the publishing industry and Book Twitter. The intense focus on these worlds could turn off a lot of readers or feel boring. I can totally understand that perspective. However, I think Kuang did an amazing job making these worlds accessible, comprehensible, AND hilarious all at the same time.

As a piece of media/entertainment, I really enjoyed this book. It was like reality TV or a car crash, I just couldn't look away. I couldn't wait to see what kind of bullshit June would pull next. I was writhing as I read this book (in the best way). Kuang's writing is so sharp, enveloping, and witty. She made the publishing industry not feel boring for outsiders. She wrote a white woman who is totally clueless and so overly confident and it was incredibly satisfying to see the stupidity of whiteness so clearly on display. There were so many great one-liners and I laughed out loud a number of times. And June's continual spiral into a self-created mental hell was unnerving and chilling. Kuang is an amazing writer.

After finishing the book, I watched a review/critique video by someone named Cindy that was really well done. Link: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JUdFkRd...
Cindy highlights some of the stronger aspects of the book and also brings up a ton of valid and insightful critiques about how racism and class were handled (or not handled) in the book. And they bring Kuang herself (a privileged, highly educated, young Asian writer) into the conversation. I didn't know anything about Kuang prior to reading this book or watching that video. After learning about her background and experiences, I saw the book in a different light. Cindy, argues that Yellowface is Kuang's way of getting even with her critics. It's explained well in the video and is really worth consideration.

This book isn't perfect. The ending, while probably realistic, was a bit of a let down. I was expecting more after so much buildup. Kuang's look at race in the publishing industry wasn't intersectional and she could have dug deeper when it comes to writing inspired by real life trauma (especially of oppressed peoples). But, I loved reading this book and found it highly entertaining and easy to get lost in.