Recently some allegations have come out about MM author Santino Hassell. It seems he was caught catfishing. There are a good number of reviewers and authors who feel betrayed by Santino Hassell.

For those of you who aren’t plugged into the online romance community, let me sum up: MM author Santino Hassell cultivated an online persona and became friends with a goodly number of other authors and readers. He presented himself as a bisexual single dad with serious health problems and massive medical bills. He asked for readers to donate to help with said bills so he’d be able to continue writing. It was then revealed that he was married, and did not in fact suffer from liver cancer liked he previously claimed. It seems there is also some question about whether or not he’s bi-sexual or if he said so to take advantage of the LGTBQ community. This is a brief summary and I’m sad to say there are a lot of accusations against him, including deceit, abuse toward readers – specifically those in the LGTBQ community – and much more.

If you want the full story, the entire thing is laid out here on Tumblr: The Santino Hassell Debacle. Riptide Publishing has broken all ties with Santino Hassell. Santino Hassell posted an apology, though, as far as I can tell, it admits no wrongdoing and only asks that other authors aren’t abused because of the allegations against him.

To be honest, Rowena and I are still sorting through the entire mess. Not everything is clear to us at the moment (there is just too much to get through and we haven’t had time to read through it all. As a result we don’t fully understand all that’s happened yet). However, we at Book Binge do not condone the abuse of readers, nor do we support those who Catfish, Doxx or deceive readers for personal gain. We have removed all Santino Hassell content from this site and will not post any in the future. Our hearts go out to those who have been victimized and hurt by the actions of this author.