Prince Harry’s controversial memoir Spare may well have got off to bright sales, but it appears that it is biggest summer read turnoff according to On The Beach which has claimed that Spare is the ‘most dumped’ book by holiday makers this summer.
On The Beach, the online tour operator, said it has received many discarded copies of the Duke of Sussex’s autobiography from resorts in Spain, Turkey and Greece.
Zoe Harris, the company’s chief customer officer, said her team had “never witnessed anything quite like it”.
On The Beach is planning to give away the surplus books through social media as libraries and local bookstores are refusing to take the discarded copies.
Harris said: “Lost property offices in our most popular resorts are brimming with copies of Spare, and we had a couple of Prince Harry’s books sent to us from a hotel that some of our customers had holidayed to.
“We thought it was quite funny at first.
“But over the past few months, several other hotels have been sending the books back. Now we have bookcases full of them.
“I’m asking hotels to please stop sending them over, otherwise we’ll never get rid of them all.”
Spare was released on 10 January 2023. It was ghostwritten by J. R. Moehringer and published by Penguin Random House.
It is 416 pages long and available in digital, paperback, and hardcover formats and has been translated into fifteen languages. There is also a 15-hour audiobook edition, which Harry narrates himself.
The book was highly anticipated and was accompanied by several major broadcast interviews.
The title refers to the aristocratic adage that an “heir and a spare” was needed to ensure that an inheritance remained in the family, a role, which as second son, Harry resented.
In the book, Harry details his childhood and the profound effect of the death of his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, as well as his troubled teenage years, and subsequent deployment to Afghanistan with the British Army.
He writes about his relationship with his brother, Prince William, and his father, King Charles III, and his father’s marriage to Camilla Parker Bowles, as well as his courtship and marriage to the American actress Meghan Markle and the couple’s subsequent stepping back from their royal roles.
Spare received generally mixed reviews from critics, some who praised Harry’s openness but were critical of the inclusion of too many personal details. According to Guinness World Records, Spare became “the fastest selling non-fiction book of all time” on the date of its release, now it is heading to break the record for the most dumped.