#Jojo moyes me before you series skin#

Richardson found these apparent similarities alarming enough that in August 2019, she brought her concerns to her publisher, Sourcebooks - which as of May 2019, Penguin Random House, Moyes’ publisher, owns a 45% stake in.Īccording to Sourcebooks publicity director Kaitlyn Kennedy, Sourcebooks’ legal team reviewed Richardson’s findings and determined that no legal action was necessary. There are also descriptive details that seem uncannily similar in both books, including an October wedding between two characters with a 3-month-old baby and a request for a copy of Woman Home’s Companion because of a baby with a teething issue. Both books feature a black packhorse librarian there is no readily available historical record confirming the existence of black packhorse librarians. For example, both feature an attack on a packhorse librarian by a town vagrant, though according to a Kentucky state librarian Richardson consulted, there is no historical evidence of such attacks occurring. But there also appear to be noticeable similarities in Moyes and Richardson’s novels. (In fact, another novel featuring a Kentucky book woman was published on Amazon in January). These are noteworthy distinctions, and it’s certainly not unheard of for two authors to be simultaneously, and unintentionally, working on books about the same topic. She meets Margery O’Hare, an outspoken single woman who encourages Alice and three other women to join her as packhorse librarians. Moyes’ new book, written in third-person narration, centers primarily on Alice Wright, an Englishwoman who marries a Kentucky man and moves to the town of Baileyville. Cussy lives as the town outcast with her coal-mining father and works as a packhorse librarian in Appalachia, delivering books on horseback to folks in the area.

#Jojo moyes me before you series skin#

Richardson’s novel, which she began writing in 2016 and published in May, is a first-person narrative about a woman named Cussy Mary Carter, who has a rare genetic condition that makes her skin appear blue (based on the real-life blue-skinned people of Kentucky). Neither the author nor anyone at Pamela Dorman Books has ever read The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek.” Moyes was not available for comment the representative cited her 'packed schedule.'īoth books are historical fiction about the packhorse librarians, a real-life group of women who, in the 1930s, delivered library books in rural Kentucky to promote literacy. We have absolute confidence in the integrity of Jojo Moyes and her work. It is a deeply researched piece of historical fiction based on the true story of the Pack Horse Librarians of Kentucky.

These fictional devices/ plot points were ones I invented.”Ī spokesperson for Moyes’ publisher Pamela Dorman Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House, told BuzzFeed News in an email, “ The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes is a wholly original work. “None of the similarities found in Moyes' novel can be chalked up to the realities of history, nor can be found in any historical records, archives or photographs of the packhorse librarian project initiative that I meticulously studied. But “the disturbing similarities found in Moyes' book are too many and too specific and quite puzzling,” she added in an email. “History is not proprietorial,” Richardson said. She became concerned, however, when a blogger who had received an advance review copy of Moyes’ book alerted Richardson in April to what she believed were unusually specific similarities between the two novels at least one bookseller has also referenced the apparent overlap in a tweet. “I could only hope there was more than enough room for more than one” novel on the topic, Richardson said in an interview with BuzzFeed News. Why? Because Richardson’s novel The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, which focuses on imagined characters in the same real-life historical setting, was set to be published in May 2019. Historical fiction writer Kim Michele Richardson was surprised when she learned in March that English author Jojo Moyes, most famous for her bestselling Me Before You romance trilogy, would be publishing The Giver of Stars, a historical novel about the real-life Pack Horse Library project in Kentucky, on Oct.