‘My name is ruined’: How a brutal BookTube review got novel Shy Girl removed from shelves

Mia Ballard’s highly anticipated book, Shy Girl, has been dramatically pulled from shelves – so here’s the messy saga explained, including the viral BookTube video.

Shy Girl initially got a lot of hype

As the third book from budding author Mia Ballard, Shy Girl initially got a lot of attention. One of Mia’s first books, Sugar, has quite positive reader reviews on Goodreads and Amazon and was published through her own publishing house, Galaxy Press. Her next book, Shy Girl, was even more viral. Self-published in February 2025, Shy Girl follows Gia and her horrific story of abuse.

and to think i was going to read the book shy girl. nevermindddd

— ⋆. ̊ ⋆⭒˚｡⋆ (@mechanigals) January 30, 2026

In this “feminist rage” novel, Gia goes from being an awkward girl looking for attention, to a victim of abuse for several years, where she had to pretend to be a dog. This included being forced to crawl on her hands and knees, and to only say “woof”.

After it’s initial popularity on TikTok and Amazon, Shy Girl was acquired in a deal with Hachett Press. The huge publishing company were going to publish the novel internationally, increasing its popularity even more.

Shy Girl was re-released to UK readers in December 2025, and quickly, Reddit and X threads started sharing excerpts from the book. Readers alleged that certain passaged in the novel were written… strangely. Soon, the conversation turned form “this is bad writing” to people claiming Shy Girl sounded like it was AI-generated.

One viral YouTube video brought a whole lot more attention to Shy Girl – for the wrong reasons

Popular BookTuber Frankie’s Shelf saw the bubbling discourse around Shy Girl, and decided to read the book for himself. On the 19th January, soon after the UK release, Frankie uploaded  a video titled I’m Pretty Sure This Book Is AI Slop.

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In the almost three-hour long video, Frankie brutally looks at all the evidence he claims shows that Shy Girl was written with the help of AI. He highlighted the repeated use of the words like “sharp”, used to describe abstract things all the time and other AI tell-tales like the overuse of the rule of three in sentences. The brutal video now has 1.4 million views, and is Frankie’s most viewed video to date.

Of course, such a massive video brought even more attention to the AI allegations against Mia Ballard. These allegations were also published in an article by The New York Times, which both Mia and Hachette responded to.

Now, Shy Girl is unavailable to purchase

In a comment provided to the paper Mia said: “This controversy has changed my life in many ways and my mental health is at an all time low and my name is ruined for something I didn’t even personally do.”

i love these comments by the editor making the accusations https://t.co/7QNVP4AYef pic.twitter.com/sd2pH24zHx

— sett's murder victim (RIP kiriko nananan) (@PumpkinNMayo) March 20, 2026

The author denies direct AI usage and claims Shy Girl was edited by a friend who used AI. She refused to give more details, claiming she’s currently pursing legal action against this “friend”.

On the 20th of March, Hachette officially removed Shy Girl from their catalogue. The UK edition is no longer being sold, and the planned US release is cancelled.

“Hachette remains committed to protecting original creative expression and storytelling,” a Hachette spokeswoman said in a statement to The New York Times.

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Featured image via Instagram/YouTube