Is it the author’s fault when a reader has a character all wrong?

Jester reading a book (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A few years ago, my father was multiple books into a series before he realized the main character was black.

Shortly thereafter, I was reading a book and didn’t realize until halfway through it that the main character was female.

When I told my dad about my this to commiserate our confusion, we discovered only then, that what he’d been reading and what I’d been reading were both by the same author! It was wacky.

Has that ever happened to you? Have y...