When Ema self-published her first novel, her best friend was happy for her... at first. But one offhand comment about the book cover started a chain reaction neither of them saw coming. What seemed like a harmless joke turned into radio silence, and then a shocking discovery buried in the pages of Ema’s story.
Hello Bright Side,
My best friend Ema recently self-published a book on Amazon, which is a huge accomplishment, and I was genuinely proud of her. But I didn’t buy it. Not because I wasn’t supportive, but because it just wasn’t my genre.
One day she showed me the cover, and I made a dumb joke saying it looked “kind of AI-generated.” I didn’t mean it in a bad way, more like an observation, since I’ve seen so many covers like that lately. But she went super quiet, and I could tell it stung. I apologized, but she didn’t really respond, and we didn’t talk much after that.
Fast-forward a week, and a mutual friend read the book and casually told me the plot. That’s when it hit me: the main character was basically me. And not in a flattering way.
Same job, same style, same inside jokes, but twisted. The character was portrayed as unsupportive, sarcastic, and honestly a bit petty. It felt like Ema had written a passive-aggressive diary entry disguised as fiction.
I get that she probably felt hurt by my reaction. But turning our relationship as friends into a story without telling me? That feels off. Especially when she never even brought it up directly.
I want to confront her, but I also don’t want to escalate things or make it about me. Part of me wonders if I really was that unsupportive. I didn’t read the book, I joked about the cover, and maybe I downplayed something that meant a lot to her. But does that mean I deserved to be turned into a villain in her novel?
Before jumping to conclusions, it’s worth reading the entire book. Hearing about it secondhand can distort things, especially if emotions are already running high.
Sometimes a joke lands harder depending on when it’s delivered. If your friend had just poured her heart into designing a cover, and you commented that it looked AI-generated, it could’ve felt like you dismissed all her effort in one sentence.
Instead of confronting her with “Did you base this character on me?”, come from a place of genuine interest. Something like, “There were a lot of familiar details. Were those inspired by real stuff?” is less accusatory and more open-ended.
Writers often put their emotions into their stories when they don’t know how to say them directly. That doesn’t make it okay, but it might help explain why she didn’t bring her hurt up in person.
