Tidewater Dreams by Isabel Allende

Southend-on-Sea thanks to Essex Views

Title: Tidewater Dreams

Author: Isabel Allende

Publisher: not known 

Source: newspaper insert in the Chicago Sun-Times, Philadelphia Inquirer etc

In May 2025 a summer reading list insert appeared in a number of American newspapers. You know the sort of thing. Best holiday reading this summer; what to read on the beach; what to pack for your summer holiday reading and so on. And usually the books in these lists are recently published, or newly published in paperback, because it’s easier to shove a paperback into your hand luggage.

However, this particular list is a little bit different. It features Tidewater Dreams by Isabel Allende, Hurricane Season by Brit Bennett, and The Collector’s Piece by Taylor Jenkins Reid. Would you consider reading any of these books while on your holiday?

Tough luck then. None of these books actually exist. They are completely fictional. And there are more.

Unbelievably, the alleged journalist tasked with compiling a suitable list of summer reading for the great American public left it to AI. Because why not? And then he didn’t check to see what AI came up with. [Sucks teeth noisily.]

So apparently only five out of the fifteen books on the published list is actually real. See here, and here for more (definitely read this).

I can’t believe this awful story. I mean pffff.

As you know, I spend a lot of time writing about fictional books. It’s good for my mental health. I know that might seem silly, but I suffer from anxiety and grief, and concentrating on fictional books takes my mind off… life. So I try to get things right.

But the books I write about are created by authors within their novels (films, TV programmes…) and are not intended to delude the reader/watcher into believing they are real. I always tell you when I haven’t actually read a book and do my best to get the details right.

Yes, there are cases of readers thinking the fictional books within books are actually real, and sometimes I have been taken in, but that’s quite unusual. Mostly we accept that a character in the book we are reading just happens to be an author who has written something. Or the book another character is reading isn’t a real book. And that’s fine, it’s part of the plot, because it’s fiction. And the author has gone to the trouble of creating this fiction.

And now…. Honestly unbelievable… The sheer lazy negligence of letting AI invent ten fictional books for your article is mind boggling. And I don’t suppose for a moment this sort of stupidity stops here. 

I suppose it’s perfectly fine if AI is used to review test results searching for breast cancer, because AI doesn’t need to sleep, but inventing new books? Oh, I don’t know.

Southend-on-Sea, Essex, thanks to Pictures of England