Plot
June Hayward, an unsuccessful young author, finds herself the only witness to the death of her former classmate and casual friend, Athena Liu, a Chinese-American author who is an industry darling. After stealing Athena's latest unpublished manuscript The Last Front, a novel about Chinese laborers in World War I, from her apartment, she decides to re-edit it, considering it to be unfinished, and ultimately decides to publish it as her original work. June submits the manuscript and is immediately offered a large advance after independent publishing house Eden Press wins the bidding war for the book. She defends her decision, claiming that she gained greater ownership of the work through her revisions of it, that the manuscript in its original form was unpublishable and that Athena often stole the life experiences of others as material for her works including a date rape incident June survived while at Yale and veterans' service during the Korean War.
Having positioned herself as a close friend and confidant of Athena address perceived similarities between The Last Front and Athena's other work, she publishes the book under an Asian-sounding name (Juniper Song, her full first name and middle name) and takes author photos where she appears racially ambiguous. Despite efforts to present herself as Asian, controversy surrounds the success of the novel, and June repeatedly fends off accusations of cultural appropriation on Twitter. While attending publicity events for the novel's publication, June sees visions of Athena sitting in the audience.
Before and after the book's publication, June attempts to prevent revelations of her plagiarism of The Last Front from becoming public. After managing to dissuade Athena's mother Patricia not to donate Athena's notes to a Yale literary archive, an anonymous social media user called @AthenaLiusGhost claims that the book was stolen from Athena and starts an online shaming campaign calling for Eden Press to acknowledge Athena as its author. With the help of her IT technician brother-in-law, June surmises that the @AthenaLiusGhost accounts are being operated by Geoffrey Carlino, Athena's ex-boyfriend whose own literary career ended following poor reviews of his debut novel, several scandals and allegations and a messy public break-up with Athena. During a meet-up, Geoff asserts that he saw Athena conducting research for The Last Front but cannot offer evidence beyond hearsay. After June records Geoff's suggestion that she pay for his silence, she coerces him into shutting down the @AthenaLiusGhost accounts, quieting public debate over the plagiarism accusations.
Despite her plagiarism not being found out and being financially solvent from sales of The Last Front, June writes a novella Mother Witch using as inspiration (and wholesale as an opening paragraph) a handwritten passage also taken from Athena's apartment. With the passage being a known poem of Athena's, June is again accused of plagiarising Athena's work. After managing to convince Eden Press that she confused Athena's poem with one of her own notes and with no litigation forthcoming from Athena's estate, June is encouraged to rewrite the opening of Mother Witch and to focus on her next book. However, public belief that June plagiarised Athena still persists, with support for June coming largely from conservative news outlets and commentators.
After rejecting the idea of doing intellectual property work, June is eventually inspired to write a fictionalised account of her theft of The Last Front, partly to sow doubt over the accusation's validity and partly to exorcise 'Athena's ghost', feeling that she can only write because of Athena's influence. After Athena's inactive social media accounts begin posting accusations of plagiarism accompanied by disturbing, distorted images of Athena, June's book soon develops into a horror story but she ends up writing herself into a corner, unwilling to end it with Athena's ghost exacting revenge.
Unwilling to take the stress anymore and convinced that Athena is somehow still alive, June agrees to meet 'Athena' at the ' Exorcist steps' at the Georgetown University campus. After hearing Athena's disembodied voice, June confesses to her theft of The Last Front and her feelings of resentment towards her, and promises to do anything to make amends. However, it is revealed that 'Athena' was in fact Candice Lee, a former assistant at Eden Press that June got fired for insisting on hiring a sensitivity reader and leaving a negative online review for The Last Front. Having been effectively blacklisted from the publishing industry, Candice sought revenge on June, orchestrating the social media posts that led June to confess and recording it. After failing to convince Candice not to release the recording, June's frustrations boil over and she fights her over it, but in the struggle June falls and is hospitalized.
After being discharged from the hospital, June learns that Candice has made the confession public and has been given multiple offers (including from Eden Press) to write an exposé. Not wanting to contemplate a future in which she cannot write and hoping to sow doubt over Candice's account of events, June decides to write her own account, framing her theft and plagiarism as a hoax designed to expose the publishing industry for pitting female authors against one another and manufacturing Athena's literary success, and depicting herself as a victim and protagonist and Candice as a cyberbully.
