Shy Girl, a horror novel by Mia Ballard, was one of those buzzy books that leapt from self-published prominence into full-on trade publication. Until yesterday, that is, when publisher Hachette pulled the book from the UK market and canceled plans to bring it to the US.
The move came after a New York Times investigation suggested that AI had been used in significant parts of the work.
Shy Girl was self-published in 2025 and quickly found an audience on social media. The novel follows a depressed, OCD woman named Gia who, down on her luck, encounters a “sugar daddy” who pays off her debts. All she has to do? Live as his literal pet. Eventually, of course, living like an animal makes her into an animal, and things apparently get nasty.
Creepy. And the prose? “I’m obsessed with the way Mia Ballard writes,” said one reviewer on Goodreads.
Not everyone thought the book was good, though, or even well-written. Another reviewer on the site called the book “absolute f—ing garbage. overwritten, repetitive, poorly executed, atrocious formatting. nothing to do with actual feminine rage and revenge.”
Just another domino.
Why bother when there is so much quality literature out there already.
Gee. God beware anyone answer the one interesting question. And that’s whether the book / storytelling is any good.
I mean it’s not surprising to me how random internet people disagree. They always do… But we could just ask a professional?! Book critic is a real job. They could tell us within a few hours if the book is any good. Or full of common story tropes. And “sudden plot twists” like when I tried writing a story with AI 😅 And whether it’s going anywhere, or how it compares to other books which have some artistic quality or meaning to them.
This link was shared on Lemmy just recently about this book. I watched some of the persons other videos, and though we have different tastes it seems like they can identify “bad” books.
I mean, lots of people thought 50 Shades of Grey was good. But no one I’ve run into in the kink community. Owner/pet is difficult to write even if you’re familiar with the subject material; absent that, it’s just another unrealistic portrayal for vanilla audiences.
I’ve lost respect for the NYT, but if their analysis is it was LLM-written, I’m satisfied enough that there were professionals on the scene. Whether it’s any good is irrelevant to the problem at hand.
Hmmh. There’s several questions here. Maybe I’d read some, if ChatGPT were able to write really good smut 😆 So it remains to be one of my questions.
But yeah. Not only NYT, the Reddit person who wrote a long post about it, also seems to know what they’re doing.
Unlike, apparently, the “author”! 🤣
Ba dum tss…
By the way, the linked 3h YouTube video answers my question. It is poorly written. Already the cover art was stolen. And apparently there’s not a single thing right about this book. I watched just the first few minutes and that’s enough to tell.
I’d not bothered to watch it, but yeah, a few minutes gives you all you need.
