Meghan Markle's 'Mouthpiece' Slammed as Critic Claims 'AI Would Disown' New Book

There is a particular kind of book review that does not merely dislike a novel, it wants to make sure you cannot unknow it. Jessa Crispin's takedown of Royal Spin — a new romcom by Omid Scobie and Robin Benway — belongs in that category. It is not a 'mixed' verdict. It's a demolition with jokes stapled to the rubble.

Crispin, writing in The Telegraph, argues the book is so blandly assembled that even the looming fear of AI-generated culture has been neutralised: 'The robots can't turn art into slop when humans have already done the job for them.' It is the sort of line designed to be screenshotted, and it has been — as it neatly fuses two fashionable anxieties, AI and cultural decline, into a single, easily digestible punch.

Royal Spin is co-written with US author Robin Benway and follows Lauren Morgan, an American press professional who swaps Washington for Buckingham Palace. In publishing terms, it is a deliberate genre swing for Scobie, better known for royal reporting and for co-authoring Finding Freedom in 2020.

It is also, crucially, arriving into a British media atmosphere that treats Scobie less like a novelist and more like a character — an author whose proximity to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle is endlessly litigated, often with more heat than proof.

The Review That Went For the Jugular

Crispin's review is less interested in whether Royal Spin is 'fun' than whether it is competent. Her main complaint is that the book substitutes brand-name sprinkling for actual writing — an accusation she illustrates by listing the roll call of product drops she says appear almost immediately: 'Celsius, Skims, Postmates, Old Navy, Uber, Prius, Netflix, Prada, Nordstrom and BTS.'

That specific criticism stings because it is concrete. Taste is subjective; a list of name-drops is not. Crispin's broader conclusion is that the book's prose and plotting are 'generic' to the point of numbness — her implied argument being that it reads like an algorithm's idea of what contemporary life sounds like.​

The sneer travels well because it flatters the reader. It invites you to join a club: the people who are too discerning to be fooled by a glossy premise and a royal setting. That is why these reviews spread faster than the books they are reviewing.

Royal Spin's Timing, Plot and the Sussex Shadow

Whatever you make of the criticism, Royal Spin is being positioned aggressively as a commercial property. HarperCollins lists the novel as going on sale Feb. 10, 2026 and pitches it as a mash-up of Emily in Paris, Veep and Red, White and Royal Blue, centring on a White House-to-palace career leap with romance and workplace chaos. Benway's own site also lists the book as arriving in February 2026.

And long before most readers could make up their own minds, Hollywood had already sniffed the concept. Deadline reported in July 2024 that Universal Television acquired the rights for series development, with writer/showrunner Emily Fox attached, and with Scobie and Benway set as executive producers. In that report, Universal TV executive Vivian Cannon framed the project as blending humour and romance while tapping 'the world's longstanding fascination with the royal family.'

Scobie, for his part, has pitched the book as a palate cleanser. In a promotional post reported by the Express, he said the project was a welcome break from 'a crazy and chaotic number of years covering the royals,' and that he and Benway 'really enjoyed' working together. That reads like a man trying to step sideways out of the royal content grinder, even as the marketing inevitably drags him back into it.​

Because in Britain, the 'Scobie question' is never just about a book. It is about what readers think they are buying: a romcom, or a proxy battle in the endless Harry-and-Meghan culture war. The irony is that Crispin's review, by making Royal Spin a punchline, may do more to raise curiosity than any careful publicity ever could.