After praising Elon Musk in her new book, a romance author is under fire
Maybe it’s not a great idea to have a character praise Elon Musk, Donald Trump’s megalomaniacal right-hand man, in your romance novel. Author Sophie Lark learned that lesson the hard way.
Her next book, Sparrow and Vine, was set to be published by Bloom Books in April this year. However, after a promotional snippet revealed a character praising Elon Musk and using stereotypical, racist language, there was substantial outrage. Because of the outrage, the book has been pulled from Bloom Books’ release schedule.
The issue isn’t just that her main character praised Musk, though. Many readers would likely have been able to overlook the line. “I was inspired by Elon Musk. I use his five-step design process,” it reads. Unfortunately, Musk still has a fan club, one made up of the deluded and ignorant, and there is no rule against putting deluded or ignorant people in your novel.
But when you put the Musk praise together with a shockingly racist quip … well, that’s when readers saw a pattern developing. The bigoted line in question is reportedly spoken by the main character (as in the person the reader is supposed to be rooting for), and it goes: “But shouldn’t there be a crew of people with questionable work visas picking these grapes for us?” Yikes. Given Trump and Musk’s deplorable desire to deport thousands of undocumented immigrants, this line is truly tone deaf.
BookTok, X, and Reddit users quickly condemned the book. “This isn’t okay. Not in my community. You will not find this sh*t in my books,” wrote Stephanie Denne, an author of paranormal fiction, on X. “Glad I never had the urge to touch a Sophie Lark book and now I definitely never will,” wrote another person.
Lark has issued an apology
In the wake of the book being pulled, Lark has quickly done some damage control. She released a statement on Instagram asking people to blame her, not Bloom Books, for the scandal. “During the editing process, Bloom recommended removing these lines, and I made the wrong choice in keeping them,” she wrote. “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 also said that the world had changed considerably between her writing the book and the offensive passages hitting the internet. “I wrote this back in the summer of 2024, and a lot has changed in the world since then, particularly in regard to the fate of immigrants worldwide and certain public figures.”
It seemed to be a heartfelt apology, but some readers weren’t buying it. “Not Sophie Lark saying she was told to remove the racist lines in her book but she said no lmao what the f**k,” wrote an X user.
Another user by the name of beyhaw said, “Sophie Lark was like ‘I wrote that line about immigrants and visas in the summer of 2024 when the conversations about immigrants was different’… as if immigrants weren’t getting their citizenships (or lack thereof) threatened in the summer of 2024?? During the campaign trail??”
It’s safe to say there’s not a lot of sympathy out there for the author right now. Others pointed out that there has been racism in other Lark books as well, referring to a passage from her book Bloody Heart where the Black main character expresses her desire to be a “slave” to a white man.
Lark did say in her apology, “Words mean nothing without action, so I am pausing this book and this series for some re-writes to ensure that my work doesn’t contribute to harm … To those I have hurt, I am very sorry.” It remains to be seen if she can come back from this incident.
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