Matthew reads, I guess...

  So this post has, somehow, been like 18 months in the making. I say somehow, I know exactly how. Before I go any further, I’m talking about My Love Mix-Up , the BL manga by Wataru Hinekure. Originally, I bought a few volumes of the manga after watching the original series, the Japanese version, but also at that point, the manga hadn’t actually finished. Now, don’t get me wrong, it finished a while ago, and I had about 800 words of messy notes on it, but since there’s now the Thai version of My Love Mix-Up airing that I am in fact watching, I figured now would be the perfect time to revive the post and clean it up. And there isn’t any major blurb, but I’m just going to use the blurb that was on the Amazon listing of the first volume, because I feel like it’s a great introduction to the concept of the manga. It says that Aoki has a crush on Hashimoto, the girl in the seat next to him in class. But he despairs when he borrows her eraser and sees she’s written the name of another ...

So, today I’m talking about The Charm Offensive by Alison Cochrun. This is one of those books that I’ve known about for the longest time, like it’s always just been on my radar (The Saturdays tease), but I had just never gotten around to picking it up. But when I got a gift card, I figured it was finally time to give it a whirl. The blurb says that the real love story happens behind the scenes. Dev Deshpande has always believed in fairy tales. So it’s no wonder that he’s spent his career crafting them on the long-running reality dating show, Ever After. As the most successful producer in the franchise’s history, Dev always scripts the perfect love story for his contestants, even as his own love life crashes and burns. But then the show casts disgraced tech wunderkind Charlie Winshaw as its star. Charlie is far from the romantic Prince Charming Ever After expects. He doesn’t believe in true love and agreed to appear on the show only as a last-ditch effort to rehabilitate his image. I...