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Reviews in progress
Sep. 22nd, 2021 02:06 pmI've been having a hard time finishing contemporary romance books lately, even when I have a lot of thoughts about them. So I thought I'd try jotting down my feelings while still reading to see if that motivates me to finish.
Love, Comment, Subscribe by Cathy Yardley
Genre: Adult contemporary romance (M/F)
I picked this book up (1) because of the Asian American protagonists, and (2) because I'm interested in romances that have a focus on modern technology. In this case, both protagonists are full-time YouTubers, which I thought would be interesting to read about.
So yeah, I don't know, I just find all of this hard to believe. If the author herself was a YouTube personality, or if she mentioned talking to prominent YouTubers in her acknowledgements, I might cut the book a bit more slack, but it's just really hard for me to buy this as realistic.
The Charm Offensive by Alison Cochrun
Genre: Adult contemporary romance (M/M)
Content warnings: Ableism, racism
Sigh.
Just...sigh.
Sometimes, I get so angry about books that I need to finish reading them so I can write a ranty review about how horrible they are.
Other times, I get so angry about books that my anger burns itself out, and I get too tired to even think about the book anymore.
I wanted to finish reading this book because the glowing reviews on Goodreads baffle me, but I'm having such a hard time finding the motivation to pick this up again.
For one, the fundamental premise of this book makes no sense. Charlie Winshaw, a handsome, rich, white man, got kicked out of his own company and blacklisted from working in the tech industry due to his mental illnesses/neurodivergence and needs to rehabilitate his image by joining a Bachelor-esque reality dating show. Excuse me? No white man would ever be blacklisted from working in the tech industry for being neurodivergent. I can forgive flimsy logical premises if the rest of the book is excellent, but that was certainly not the case here.
People praise this book for being diverse, due to its queer rep, BIPOC rep, and neurodivergent rep. First of all, praising a white author for BIPOC rep is a problem, period. And while I can't personally speak to the Indian rep, I'm so disappointed and upset that people are praising the BIPOC rep in this book when Dev, who is Indian American, excuses his white boss's anti-Black comments. Excuse me?
It gets even worse with the neurodivergent rep, the one part of the book I didn't expect to be horrible, but which ended up feeling like I was being punched in the face over and over again.
Dev Deshpande has depression; I didn't get far enough in the book to see how that was really handled. Charlie Winshaw has generalized anxiety disorder (including social anxiety), OCD, and seems to have been unintentionally written as possibly being autistic.
Charlie's anxiety and OCD make being on a reality dating show his worst nightmare. He is literally having a nervous breakdown almost every single day he's on the set of Ever After. Reading him being pushed so far outside his comfort zone and getting screamed at when he can't act like a neurotypical person honestly stressed me out too much to understand how anyone could find this funny.
Do people really not understand that a core part of the disabled experience is constantly being pressured and forced to do things that you don't want to do because people either ignore or minimize your disability and don't believe you when you say something is difficult for you? Uncritically replicating that experience isn't good representation—it's reinforcing ableism.
Finally, Charlie is apparently demisexual and demiromantic, and as an aro-spec person, he's constantly forced by his love interest to find true love. This is not good aro-spec representation, folks.
The Charm Offensive fails at representation on nearly every level. The fact that people herald this as a good, needed example of diversity in the romance genre is genuinely upsetting to me.
Love, Comment, Subscribe by Cathy Yardley
Genre: Adult contemporary romance (M/F)
I picked this book up (1) because of the Asian American protagonists, and (2) because I'm interested in romances that have a focus on modern technology. In this case, both protagonists are full-time YouTubers, which I thought would be interesting to read about.
I will freely admit that I am only a consumer on YouTube, not a content creator, and I don’t know what goes into doing YouTube full time (besides, you know, creating videos). But some of the milestones floated in the book seemed hard to believe to me. I watch video game streamers on YouTube, and it seems to me that 2-5 million subscribers (without a Twitch presence) already make those channels Very Big Deals on YouTube; 9 million subs, which Tobin has, seems like stratospheric success. I don't really know what constitutes a successful number of subs for beauty YouTubers, but for other channels, over one million subs seems like enough for people to do it full-time. Not to mention Patreon isn't even mentioned??
Also...agents for YouTubers? Seriously? I could buy it for YouTubers who are such big deals that they get invited onto shows, or are trying to break into Hollywood or something, but not really for the "average" YouTuber.
Tobin's storyline kind of bugs me. I get being an author/musician/filmmaker who has creative block, but not really a YouTuber, because it seems like such a privilege to be able to make a full-time salary off YouTube. Plus, it's so rare for videos to go viral that it seems like a really unattainable goal to try to produce lots of videos that go viral. Honestly, I got kind of annoyed reading about his struggles and wanted to tell him, "If you don't want to produce YouTube videos, go do something else! Seriously!"
In the video game YouTube community, I know of people who tried to become full-time YouTubers and ended up burning out under the pressure of producing videos every day and coming up with video ideas. One YouTuber/Twitch streamer I'm familiar with (who actually does not do YouTube as his full-time job) always cautions against people trying to do YouTube full time and recommends people only do it if they love it, similar to advice given for any other creative/entertainment career.Also...agents for YouTubers? Seriously? I could buy it for YouTubers who are such big deals that they get invited onto shows, or are trying to break into Hollywood or something, but not really for the "average" YouTuber.
Tobin's storyline kind of bugs me. I get being an author/musician/filmmaker who has creative block, but not really a YouTuber, because it seems like such a privilege to be able to make a full-time salary off YouTube. Plus, it's so rare for videos to go viral that it seems like a really unattainable goal to try to produce lots of videos that go viral. Honestly, I got kind of annoyed reading about his struggles and wanted to tell him, "If you don't want to produce YouTube videos, go do something else! Seriously!"
So yeah, I don't know, I just find all of this hard to believe. If the author herself was a YouTube personality, or if she mentioned talking to prominent YouTubers in her acknowledgements, I might cut the book a bit more slack, but it's just really hard for me to buy this as realistic.
The Charm Offensive by Alison Cochrun
Genre: Adult contemporary romance (M/M)
Content warnings: Ableism, racism
Sigh.
Just...sigh.
Sometimes, I get so angry about books that I need to finish reading them so I can write a ranty review about how horrible they are.
Other times, I get so angry about books that my anger burns itself out, and I get too tired to even think about the book anymore.
I wanted to finish reading this book because the glowing reviews on Goodreads baffle me, but I'm having such a hard time finding the motivation to pick this up again.
For one, the fundamental premise of this book makes no sense. Charlie Winshaw, a handsome, rich, white man, got kicked out of his own company and blacklisted from working in the tech industry due to his mental illnesses/neurodivergence and needs to rehabilitate his image by joining a Bachelor-esque reality dating show. Excuse me? No white man would ever be blacklisted from working in the tech industry for being neurodivergent. I can forgive flimsy logical premises if the rest of the book is excellent, but that was certainly not the case here.
People praise this book for being diverse, due to its queer rep, BIPOC rep, and neurodivergent rep. First of all, praising a white author for BIPOC rep is a problem, period. And while I can't personally speak to the Indian rep, I'm so disappointed and upset that people are praising the BIPOC rep in this book when Dev, who is Indian American, excuses his white boss's anti-Black comments. Excuse me?
It gets even worse with the neurodivergent rep, the one part of the book I didn't expect to be horrible, but which ended up feeling like I was being punched in the face over and over again.
Dev Deshpande has depression; I didn't get far enough in the book to see how that was really handled. Charlie Winshaw has generalized anxiety disorder (including social anxiety), OCD, and seems to have been unintentionally written as possibly being autistic.
Charlie's anxiety and OCD make being on a reality dating show his worst nightmare. He is literally having a nervous breakdown almost every single day he's on the set of Ever After. Reading him being pushed so far outside his comfort zone and getting screamed at when he can't act like a neurotypical person honestly stressed me out too much to understand how anyone could find this funny.
Do people really not understand that a core part of the disabled experience is constantly being pressured and forced to do things that you don't want to do because people either ignore or minimize your disability and don't believe you when you say something is difficult for you? Uncritically replicating that experience isn't good representation—it's reinforcing ableism.
Finally, Charlie is apparently demisexual and demiromantic, and as an aro-spec person, he's constantly forced by his love interest to find true love. This is not good aro-spec representation, folks.
The Charm Offensive fails at representation on nearly every level. The fact that people herald this as a good, needed example of diversity in the romance genre is genuinely upsetting to me.
