Charming as a Verb

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The guy's running around all day—charming people, making it by with dog walking, running to his next engagement, and having a constant dialogue with himself in his head—and it's a lot. I wish there were switching of povs because Henri was not doing a good job at narrating the whole book. For all ebook purchases, you will be prompted to create an account or login with your existing HarperCollins username and password.

Our main character Henri is certainly a charming one; he smiles a lot, he’s a high-achiever and overall well-rounded students, he has a busy social life, and he loves dogs. Henri was only two shades away from what Rita Mae Brown says we need to be happy Happiness is pretty simple: someone to love, something to do, something to look forward to. I look at Corinne afterward, and everything about the moment feels like a postcard: the lint caught in her pink hat, the flush of her cheeks, the way she's scanning my face and biting the inside of her cheek as if there are a million things in her head that she's trying to hold back right now. I laughed so much while listening to this (and the audiobook is brilliantly narrated by James Fouhey; his narration was AMAZING). Near the end of the book, there's a scene where Henri and his girlfriend are about to have sex for the first time but Henri (for reasons I won't spoil) isn't in the mood.

In the case of his dog-walking business, I didn’t take issue with this trait because he has the necessary skills, just not the reputation and acclaim to back him up. And not writing like her can be a good thing, since I'm still mad at her for giving me a book hangovwer after the song of achilles.

He's a scholarship student at the illustrious and exclusive FATE Academy, he's on the debate team, he attends every party, and he's making money on the side as a dog walker during all hours of the day. Also, she’s actually a good conversationalist once she became less uptight, as her immediate connection with Ming and Marvyn have shown us.

I really wish that we could have had a dual POV with Corinne and Henri because I think it would have added so much more to the story. The only thing that redeems the book is the sporadic humor and surprisingly insightful commentary about nepotism, poverty, and how first-generation immigrants must tirelessly work for the American dream. A witty, humorous, realistic snapshot of the pressures young people face as they make their way into adulthood. Like, we do have glimpses of what it's like for Henri to be a first-generation Haitian-American while attending a school with other privileged students who were born in America. It was genuinely a struggle for me to get through this book and it took me over a week to read it, when normally a contemporary like this would take me 2-3 days.

But what I really appreciated about this book was the level of depth in all other aspects just under the surface. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Also, it’s a pity the romance feels like an insta-love, because that’s not what I expected based on the blurb. My first reason for picking up this book was because Ben Philippe wrote it, but when I saw that cover! Oh, really adore Henri as a main character, he IS charming even though its not l through out the story but this is what makes him a well written character.I mentioned in the beginning how Henri is a people person and by that, I mean he talked a lot 😂 Not only on the outside, but also inside his head.