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Pearl is a trans woman writer on the cusp of literary greatness... or so she thought until her agent informs her that her first book has sunken like a stone for its failure to "connect with normal people". Normal people. Heterosexual people. Cisgender people.Jaded from the knowledge that this industry rarely lets in people like her, Pearl comes up with a plan: write a commercial male/male romance. Except the market's all about authenticity these days, isn't it? The plan gets complicated, drawing her into a web of escalating deceptions where she poses as a cisgender gay man and comes ever closer to destroying all her relationships, and her own life.A Rotten Girl is a satirical drama that explores gender, public personas, the commodification of queerness—and the reality of what it is like to be a trans woman in a hostile world.
Publication Year: 2025
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3.5/5 (rounded up to 4)
CW: transphobia, misgendering, panic attack (on-page), homophobia, lesbophobia, suicidal thoughts (mentioned), racism (mentioned), ableism (mentioned), gun violence
Closed Door Mod: Chapter 8 (some parts)
While it's quite the same as Yellowface by R.F. Kuang (if that's what you're hoping A Rotten Girl is like while reading this book), but the book itself is not bad.
Sure, there's some weird tangents for a page or two (though my guess is that it's part of Pearl's character trait of overthinking everything) and I don't think that we needed that many excerpts from M&E, but I think Topaz provides an interesting conversation to the table about a marginalized author adopting a pseudonym to make themselves palatable to readers. Pearl's not as much of a likeable character, but I think hearing her explanations about why she feels like she has to adopt the persona cis gay man in order to work to be heard, those reasons are somewhat understandable (even though I don't agree with the lengths Pearl went to in order to protect that persona). I also thought that Topaz does a great job of highlighting internet discourse and how that can drastically change with the slightest action or comment.
That being said, if you want something similar to Yellowface but want commentary on online discourse and transfem rep, you might enjoy A Rotten Girl.
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