Meghan Markle’s new kids’ book is already getting panned before publication — with online critics accusing it of looking like a rip-off of another work already available in stores.
“Before you run out and waste money on the book by Harry’s wife, read ‘The Boy on the Bench’ by Corrinne Averiss and Gabriel Alborozo … The original,” one Twitter user wrote of the apparent likeness.
Dozens of others soon complained on Twitter that the Duchess of Sussex’ book, “The Bench,” didn’t only share a similar title to UK author Averiss’ 2018 book — but also similar artwork from Christian Robinson.
Many others insisted the storyline — which Markle said “started as a poem I wrote for my husband on Father’s Day, the month after Archie was born” — also sounded too similar to be true.
One online critic, Emma Kaye Wootton, even suggested that the book was “Blatantly plagiarized” and that Markle’s work should be “boycotted.”
“I’ll wager a bet that Corrinne’s book is in Archie’s collection. That’s where her idea came from. I don’t believe that this is all her own thinking or reflects her idyllic life whatsoever,” she claimed.
However, the attacks were soon dismissed by the very author the duchess was accused of copying.
“Reading the description and published excerpt of the Duchess’s new book, this is not the same story or the same theme as ‘The Boy on the Bench.’ I don’t see any similarities,” Averiss insisted on Twitter.