The Charm Offensive

I will give credit where credit where credit is due—this book makes no qualms about what it is. Cheesy, sappy, silly romance between two gay dudes that could honestly work as a fanfiction if you tried hard enough. Just replace the names with your characters of choice. It has that over red white and royal blue, I'll tell you that much. I think what just irritated me and annoyed me to hell and beyond was the writing style. Every other page and every other conversation was some fucking GSA spiel about labels and their importance or mental health and so much of the cast of the book was clearly diverse for the sake of diversity. Dev being Indian doesn't impact him or his character in any way, and is about as relevant as the color of his underwear.

I do not understand how so many people love this book, and okay, sure, some books aren't meant for me, but the writing style for this book just infuriated me. If it wasn't some conversation about asexuality and neurodivergence, it was the attempts at being witty and funny that just felt flat. If it wasn't that, it was the random ass fucking metaphors (“his violin eyes” “hands spaced apart like she was building a small IKEA shelf”), and if it wasn't that, it was the way the characters just interacted with each other like every conversation was a Reddit thread or a twitter debate. Maybe people like that! I certainly didn't! Who even the fuck gives a shit! Dev could be a white gay dude and it wouldn't make a difference! You could cut out 30% of this book and nothing would change!

Still better than red white and royal blue tho so