Charming as a Verb

Product Information

It shows his impending burnout and shines a light on the impossible standards forced on teens today. Follows Henry, a charming Haitian teen whose easygoing personality masks his burning desire to go to his dream university. As he navigates the incredibly privileged school he goes to and the wealth, and opportunity, gap between his classmates. To access your ebook(s) after purchasing, you can download the free Glose app or read instantly on your browser by logging into Glose.

We ain't gonna talk about Ming because he was a side character friend, and I didn't like that, but whatever. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Also, it’s a pity the romance feels like an insta-love, because that’s not what I expected based on the blurb.

It's time for him to prove that he’s more than just a charming guy, and that he is deserving of the opportunities he so desperately seeks. I listened to the audiobook while at work and I kept screaming commentary to myself so many times, my coworkers kept looking at me funny. From both the academic and the college pressure, but also the wistfulness as if there’s a clock ticking, where everything will irreversibly changed. 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.

It’s also his father’s dream for Henri, so there’s added pressure and worry about whether he’ll get in. He is a star debater and popular student at the prestigious FATE academy, the dutiful first-generation Haitian son, and the trusted dog walker for his wealthy New York City neighbors.There is only one person who seems immune to Henri’s charms: his “intense” classmate and neighbor Corinne Troy. If Henri and Corinne were more intriguing or this novel dropped the romance altogether, I would have considered the book as charming as it claimed to be. With a focused drive to succeed and attend Princeton, she's turned her high school career into a marathon race of studying, applications, and academic achievement. There is the stress with getting all the applications in, keeping your grades up, and padding your "resume" so that the colleges notice you.

This book explores the pressures teens experience during the college application process, and how the expectations of their parents can add a layer of stress to an already tense situation.

But there’s a lot to unpack from this book other than that, of class privileges and being a child of an immigrant, of being a first generation Haitian-American and how it puts Henri and Corrine on different position and how it fell on him to realize “The American Dream”. She helps Halti see what his dreams could be instead of what he thinks they must be, and they both let down their guard to let each other in.