- Drew Berquist - https://www.drewberquist.com -

Meghan Markle’s Book Fails To Make Bestseller List While Kate Middleton’s Still Soars High

Days after giving birth to her daughter Lilibet, Meghan Markle has been hit with some bad news as her children’s book “The Bench” failed to make the bestseller list in the United Kingdom on the day of its release.

Meanwhile, her sister-in-law Kate Middleton’s photography book, which reached number two on the day of its release, is still soaring high on the bestseller list weeks after it came out.

Daily Mail [1] reported that “The Bench,” which is Meghan’s first book, was based on a poem that she wrote for her husband Prince Harry for his first Father’s Day after the birth of their son Archie. The book is meant to look into the “special bond between father and son” as “seen through a mother’s eyes.”

Meghan dedicated the book to Harry and their son, saying that they make her heart go “pump-pump.” Alongside a drawing of a father and son playing together, she wrote, “When life feels in shambles, you’ll help him find order.”

Unfortunately for Meghan, however, the book has been panned by critics, with The Telegraph’s [2]Claire Allfree describing it as “semi-literate.”

“One wonders how any publisher could have thought fit to publish this grammar-defying set of badly rhyming cod homilies, let alone think any child anywhere would want to read it,” she added. “But that’s planet Sussex for you, where even the business of raising a family is all about the brand.”

The Times [3]‘ Alex Connell wrote that the book was a “self-help manual for needy parents.”

“The story [is] so lacking in action and jeopardy you half wonder if the writing job was delegated to a piece of furniture…” Connell continued.

Meghan’s book has failed to make Amazon’s top 200 bestsellers, reaching just 205 in the charts and number 60 on the list of bestselling children’s books.

This will be all the more embarrassing for Meghan given the fact that it’s only been a few weeks since Kate Middleton’s photography contest book “Hold Still” skyrocketed to the  top of the bestseller list on the day that it came out, becoming the second highest-selling book out of all titles on Amazon. Weeks later, Kate’s book is still on the bestseller list at number 113.

Many accused Meghan of hypocrisy for writing a children’s book about fathers when she has long been estranged from her own father, Thomas Markle.

“It’s very easy to talk about relationships between fathers and sons when they are two years old,” royal biographer Penny Junor told The Sun [4]. “But problems come when the children are older — as Meghan found out with her father and Harry with Prince Charles.”

Angela Levin, Harry’s biographer, agreed with this assessment.

“Once again we have the hypocrisy of Meghan and Harry saying one thing but not doing it themselves,” she said. “I don’t know how you can write about a boy, a son or a father, when you haven’t spoken to your own father for years. It is extraordinary.”

This piece originally appeared in UpliftingToday.com [5] and is used by permission.