It hasn’t even been a full week since Aaron Carter’s tragic death and Ballast Books is already planning to release a digital copy of the former child star’s unfinished memoir on November 15th. According to a post on Ballast’s Facebook page, publisher Andy Symonds worked with Carter for “many hours” over the course of 3+ years to co-write the book, Aaron Carter: An Incomplete Story of an Incomplete Life. “I feel I owe it to him to release the parts we did complete,” Symonds wrote in the post. Well, he is and people are not happy about it.
Namely, Hilary Duff, who is rightly incensed at the quick and opportunistic turnaround of her first love’s autobiography. Passages in the book describe Carter and Duff losing their virginity to one another, in a hotel room, around their 13th birthdays. In a statement to the Daily Mail, Duff said:
“It’s really sad that within a week of Aaron’s death, there’s a publisher that seems to be recklessly pushing a book out to capitalize on this tragedy without taking appropriate time or care to fact check the validity of his work.
To water down Aaron’s life story to what seems to be unverified click-bait for profit is disgusting. In no way do I condone shedding any light on what is so obviously an uninformed, heartless, money grab.”
Carter’s management company is siding with Duff on this one, too. They thanked her for her statement and added, “In the few short days following our dear friend’s passing we have been trying to grieve and process while simultaneously having to deal with obscenely disrespectful and unauthorized releases.” After the news of Carter’s death broke, Duff shared a very lovely message on her Instagram, writing that he had an “absolutely effervescent” charm: “boy did my teenage self love you deeply.”
The New York Post has already shared excerpts from the unpublished memoir (obviously) that include a recollection of a young Carter waking up to Michael Jackson sitting at the foot of his bed. Not only is it a disrespectful bummer that this publisher is turning around these unverified accounts so quickly after the star’s death, but the people named in them, who are surely still grieving, have to deal with some of these revelations, too.
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- The Crown continues to shine the stashed away jewels of the Royal family that we’re actually interested in seeing. Case in point: King Charles was a breakdancer. [Vanity Fair]
- People’s 41-year-old Sexiest Man Alive has a 25-year-old girlfriend. [Page Six]