‘A hit job reading like a Mumsnet post about the world’s worst in-laws’ and ‘a mishmash of ancient history’: More damning reviews of Omid Scobie’s ‘Endgame’ as the book hits shelves today
Omid Scobie’s new book about the royal family has been the subject of more scathing reviews overnight, with one book describing it as ‘a success that reads like a Mumsnet post about the world’s worst in-laws’.
Endgame, which hits shelves today, received a whopping two out of five stars in the Telegraph, condemning the author’s “burning indignation at being locked out” of the palace.
It adds that there is “little gossip to be had here,” while at the same time containing “lots of little details.”
The Times’ assessment was not much kinder, calling the book “less a sharp look at why he thinks the monarchy is doomed and more a mish-mash of ancient history.”
The review also mocks Scobie’s poetic-faced prose, describing the book as starting with “him buying a black jumper, followed by how he ended up at a TV studio in Hammersmith.”
The first reviews of Omid Scobie’s Endgame are out and critics have said it is ‘dedicated to righting minor slights against the Sussexes’.
The pithy New York Times review says we’ve heard most of it before
The Independent gave Endgame three stars in their review. They claim the book portrays William as the ‘bad guy’
Endgame, which hits shelves today, received a whopping two out of five stars in the Telegraph
It comes after the usually Sussex-sympathetic New York Times compared Scobie’s writing to an AI bot and declared that Harry and Meghan’s favorite journalist is doing them ‘no favours’.
In a pithy review, the liberal American newspaper claims that a chapter about the couple even ‘reads like a press release devised by ChatGPT’.
It also says the book is “not so different from what Harry presented in ‘Spare,'” and “is dedicated to correcting minor slights against the Sussexes.”
America’s first review of the book adds: ‘Readers hoping for a final death blow from gossip will be disappointed. We’ve heard a lot about it. From Fergie, from Diana, from Charles, from Harry, from Harry, from Harry again.’
Meanwhile, the equally left-wing Independent news website in Britain claims that ‘he paints Meghan and Harry in a ruthlessly saintly light’.
NYT writer Eva Wolchover, co-host of the royal podcast Windsors & Losers, is critical of Endgame after receiving an advanced copy.
She says: “Whether or not Scobie actively collaborated with Meghan and Harry on this book, he is not doing them any favors. Their chapter reads like a press release from ChatGPT, and sheds little light on them as people.’
The New York Times had the first review in the US, and The Independent in the UK. Both are left-wing press
Ms Wolchover also says of the author’s warnings that the royal family is facing extinction: ‘It’s hard not to find Scobie’s dire predictions a little hyperbolic.’
She writes: ‘Scobie defines the term ‘endgame’ as ‘the final stage of a chess game after most of the pieces have been removed from the board’, adding: ‘Unless Charles and his heirs act quickly, Scobie points out, they will miss out. risk of losing. the crown, or at least its remaining cultural relevance.”
The Independent had the first UK review of Endgame and gave it three stars.
Writer Anna Pasternak says Scobie is “unfailingly sympathetic to the Sussexes.”
She writes: ‘He doesn’t hold them responsible for anything – he doesn’t demonize Charles, as I expected, or castigate Camilla. I expected something different: he would possibly address the evil monarch King Charles and the evil stepmother Queen Camilla. The real royal villain here is William.