Romance Author Cancels Her Own Book After Activists Complain About Elon Musk Reference To "Ensure My Work Doesn't Do More Harm"
Romance author Sophie Lark placed a reference to Elon Musk in one of her recent books, sparking outrage from a leftist mob, and as a result, she’s caved and pulled her book from publication to do re-writes so the book “doesn’t contribute to harm.”
Cancel culture is nothing new to many in the independent spaces online. The mob tactic of generating a swell of public outrage on social media to damage someone’s reputation or cost them their job has been prevalent for years now. This has happened primarily to conservative creators in industries inhabited largely by woke leftists, but every so often they turn on one of their own. This is what happened to romance author Sophie Lark.
Sophie Lark is a successful romance author with a prominent following. She has over 90k followers on TikTok and 137k followers on Instagram. She has multiple books and series in the romance genre, though no controversial issues have risen before now. In researching her online content, most of it is notably apolitical in nature.
Sophie Lark’s publishing house Bloom Books recently released her new book Sparrow and Vine, which at her request she’s now pulled out of publication because activists attacked her saying the book “praises Elon Musk” and is “MAGA-Coded”. Users took two specific lines as spoken by the book’s main character to foment an online groundswell within romance reader spaces targeting the author and her publisher over dialogue they claim is racist and perpetuates stereotypes, as well as praising Elon Musk.
Criticism began to build as early readers of the book’s advance copies posted the offending lines and romance readers took to social media to voice their outrage. One excerpt has a character stating “Shouldn’t there be a crew of people with questionable work visas picking these grapes for us?”
Another line of dialogue that offended was a character stating, “I was inspired by Elon Musk. I use his five step design process.”
While a completely innocuous line that speaks to Musk’s business practices and has nothing to do with politics, the left was triggered simply because of the name.
An innumerable amount of booktok and bookstagram responses to these comments started going viral amongst Sophie Lark’s fans and romance readers, which led to Bloom Books dropping her as an author. Fans also then started digging through her past works to find other passages to further validate her cancellation.
In a statement on her Instagram and TikTok accounts on Monday, Sophie Lark apologized to those criticizing her, stating she would be pausing the series and revising it “to ensure that my work doesn’t contribute to harm.” She also defended her now-former publisher Bloom Books stating their editors recommended removing the controversial lines, but she kept them in as the lines were intended to depict a “flawed character.”
In her Instagram statement, she acts as if she committed a crime, “Reading your messages and hearing your perspectives over the past 24 hours has been humbling, and I want to acknowledge the pain my words have caused. I am truly sorry. My intention was to craft and demonstrate a flawed main character, but instead, I wrote dialogue that read as attacking to a community that I care about very much.”
She continued, “During the editing process, Bloom recommended removing these lines, and I made the wrong choice in keeping them. I now understand that impact matters more than intent, and I regret that my words caused harm. Please don’t blame Bloom for my mistakes.”
She further elaborated “I wrote the novel in the summer of 2024 and a lot in the world has changed since then, particularly in regard to the fate of immigrants worldwide and certain public figures.” In regards to the controversy she continued, “I will also be listening more closely to our sensitivity readers and taking additional steps to educate myself on responsible storytelling.”
At this point, she canceled her own book saying she is “pausing this book and this series for some re-writes to ensure my work doesn’t contribute to harm.”
Cancellations of figures in the past who apologized have previously brought home a single, undeniable truth: apologizing does nothing to placate those who demand the canceling. Sophie Lark’s apology did not stop readers from swarming Goodreads, Tiktok, Instagram, and Amazon with negative one-star reviews for her existing books. Scorned readers declared angrily their intention never to support her again.
While it’s ridiculous that readers are canceling her over such innocuous lines, her response taking it seriously and acting like somehow talking about Elon Musk’s business practices in a throwaway line causes harm is part of the problem contributing to these mobs having power. Sophie Lark is no victim, she cultivated exactly the audience she hoped she’d get, and now is reaping the issues stemming from it.
What do you think of romance readers and BookTok activists canceling author Sophie Lark?
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What a weakling. She basically admitted to not being an author, but rather slop producer controlled by sensitivity readers.
I too made an Elon reference in my book. He goes out real bad. Not changing it for anyone.