Michelle Dsouza
I have a note from page 232 that reads: "Still no progress of the plot. Jason has a lot of opinions. And they're not very good or relevant. At least he's funny. But is that enough? I've been bored for about 200 of the 232 pages."
Reader, I finished it anyway. All 408 of them.
Charlotte Street has a genuinely interesting premise. Jason Priestly, a man who is not the actor Jason Priestly and has resigned himself to a lifetime of that joke, helps a woman juggling too many things into a cab on Charlotte Street. In the process she accidentally leaves behind a disposable camera. He gets the photos developed. He becomes quietly obsessed with finding her. That's it. That's the whole book. And for 400 of its 408 pages, almost nothing happens.
The plot begins on page 7. It gains movement on page 400. That is not a pacing issue. That is a structural decision that does not work.
What keeps you going is Danny Wallace's humor, which is genuine and consistent even when everything around it is not. There are legitimately funny jokes in here. The relationship between Jason and his flatmate Dev is the book's best dynamic: two annoying blokes living together, the kind you'd never actually want to visit but find oddly compelling to read about. The relatable moments land too. The adding and deleting of an ex from social media. The overthinking that paralyzes you before you talk to someone you're interested in. The specific texture of post-breakup imposter syndrome. Wallace understands that register and writes it well.
The problem is that relatable moments and consistent humor are not enough to carry 408 pages of a plot that refuses to move. Jason as a protagonist is whiny, lacking in basic courage, and impossible to root for. The mystery girl thread stays thin from beginning to end. The ending arrives and is so anticlimactic that the 400 pages of build-up feel like a genuine imposition on the reader's time. The blurb describes it as "a heartwarming everyday tale of boy stalks girl." He does not stalk her. He doesn't even know who she is. He sees her a few times and fails to speak to her each time because of his own overthinking. That's not a love story. That's a man being a pansy for 400 pages.
The audiobook, narrated by Mackenzie Crook and Wendy Wason, is the version I'd reluctantly recommend if you're going to read this at all. Their voices give the humor better delivery than the page does, and frankly gave me more reason to finish than the book itself provided.
Not for everyone. Definitively not for me.
2.5 stars, rounded to 3 on Goodreads.
Shelves: fiction, romance, british-fiction, audio, physical, 2026-reads, contemporary, humor
Originally posted at www.instagram.com.
I have a note from page 232 that reads: "Still no progress of the plot. Jason has a lot of opinions. And they're not very good or relevant. At least he's funny. But is that enough? I've been bored for about 200 of the 232 pages."
Reader, I finished it anyway. All 408 of them.
Charlotte Street has a genuinely interesting premise. Jason Priestly, a man who is not the actor Jason Priestly and has resigned himself to a lifetime of that joke, helps a woman juggling too many things into a cab on Charlotte Street. In the process she accidentally leaves behind a disposable camera. He gets the photos developed. He becomes quietly obsessed with finding her. That's it. That's the whole book. And for 400 of its 408 pages, almost nothing happens.
The plot begins on page 7. It gains movement on page 400. That is not a pacing issue. That is a structural decision that does not work.
What keeps you going is Danny Wallace's humor, which is genuine and consistent even when everything around it is not. There are legitimately funny jokes in here. The relationship between Jason and his flatmate Dev is the book's best dynamic: two annoying blokes living together, the kind you'd never actually want to visit but find oddly compelling to read about. The relatable moments land too. The adding and deleting of an ex from social media. The overthinking that paralyzes you before you talk to someone you're interested in. The specific texture of post-breakup imposter syndrome. Wallace understands that register and writes it well.
The problem is that relatable moments and consistent humor are not enough to carry 408 pages of a plot that refuses to move. Jason as a protagonist is whiny, lacking in basic courage, and impossible to root for. The mystery girl thread stays thin from beginning to end. The ending arrives and is so anticlimactic that the 400 pages of build-up feel like a genuine imposition on the reader's time. The blurb describes it as "a heartwarming everyday tale of boy stalks girl." He does not stalk her. He doesn't even know who she is. He sees her a few times and fails to speak to her each time because of his own overthinking. That's not a love story. That's a man being a pansy for 400 pages.
The audiobook, narrated by Mackenzie Crook and Wendy Wason, is the version I'd reluctantly recommend if you're going to read this at all. Their voices give the humor better delivery than the page does, and frankly gave me more reason to finish than the book itself provided.
Not for everyone. Definitively not for me.
2.5 stars, rounded to 3 on Goodreads.
Shelves: fiction, romance, british-fiction, audio, physical, 2026-reads, contemporary, humor
Originally posted at www.instagram.com.