I was trying to write a flowery introduction here, but unfortunately the word’s aren’t coming to me today. Instead, I give you this.

Zoe didn’t write her book. There’s a bunch of proof under the cut.

To start of with, the dedications page of Girl Online. I don’t have an exact source for this, but all of you are probably going to buy the book tomorrow so just trust me till then.

“I want to thank everyone at Penguin for helping me put together my forst novel, especially Amy Alward and Siobhan Curham, who were with me every step of the way.”

Amy Alward is the editor. Who is Siobhan Curham?

A quick Google search leads you to her blog. A quick poke around reveals this post (The Blog post has since been taken down. I haven’t been able to find a screenshot or cached version. If you have one, please send it my way!) Some amazing people have directed me to where the blog post was posted on Goodreads (here) and because it’s bound to be deleted, a cached version is available here.

“So, when I was asked this year by a publisher if I could write a book for them and oh yes, please could I write it in six weeks, you can imagine the expletive deleteds that popped into my head.



But part of me was intrigued. The same perverse part of me that’s always wondered what it must be like to hang glide over the Niagra Falls.



So, I decided to accept the challenge aaaaaand … I did it!

I wrote an entire 80,000 word novel in six weeks.”

80,000 is about 320 pages on average, Zoe’s book is 350 pages.

The author answers the question of what book it was in the comments as The Moonlight Dreamers. However, according to her twitter, she finished that book in January and it will be published in 2015. This begs the question of why it would have to be finished in six weeks. Furthermore, why doesn’t she state the publishing company?

Something else interesting is in a blog post from a ghostwriter, the author says,

“…it’s often written in my contract that I must receive the first acknowledgement, and that it must be worded in such a way that people in publishing will easily decipher what my role was. The acknowledgement usually reads something like, ‘I’d like to thank Sari Botton for helping me find the words.’”

This fits perfectly with the acknowledgment in Zoe’s book.

So theoretically, Zoe was offered a book deal from Penguin because they knew it would make a lot of money. Zoe came up with a concept and plot. Siobhan Curham was hired as a ghostwriter as she is a fairly unknown but proven successful YA author. Penguin decides on a late November release date to cash in on Christmas spending. Siobhan pumps out the book in six weeks. I’m not saying that’s exactly what happened, just a possible series of events based on what evidence we have.

I don’t doubt it was Zoe’s idea and ghostwriting is pretty common among celebrity books (although, mostly biographies), but the fact still remains, it really doesn’t look like Zoe wrote it.