In modern romance The Undateable, author Sarah Title is wrong about which character is undateable

 

 

The first conceit of The Undateable by Sarah Title is the idea that women who are frumpy geeks will not find love unless they change.  This is demonstrably untrue.  All kinds of people find love.  Mean people, nice people, well-dressed people, slobs, smut writers . . . .  In general people tend (despite every romcom trope) to fall in love with people who are similar to them.  Frumpy people tend to fall in love with other frumpy people.  Materialistic people tend to fall in love with other materialist people.  That's because we enjoy people who we have things in common with.  If you love looking good, you're going to want to be with people who also love looking good.  If your idea of a great time is playing D&D at a comic book store on a Friday night, you'll be thrilled to hang out with people who agree.  

So, the idea that heroine Bernie (authors, please stop giving male nicknames to heroines who identify as female. It's annoying), who is a frumpy librarian but also has a pretty cool personality and everyone who knows her likes her and she actually does hook up with trivia night people from time to time, is incapable of finding a date, much less love, without a makeover really makes no sense.  

The second conceit of the novel is that hero Colin is worthy of Bernie.  Colin is a manchild.  He lives in his parents' house, rent-free, after his parents have moved out to their retirement home.  (No explanation is given of the parents' financial circumstances.  They must be pretty well off to be able to afford to not sell their first home in San Francisco when they buy a second home in San Diego.)  Colin resents the hell out of his parents insisting that he have a job if he is going to live rent-free in their house.  At his job as a senior writer for a magazine he feels threatened by a 20 year old college dropout -- who may be the most awesome character in the book.  He gets blackout drunk on a fairly regular basis.

Bernie, by contrast, lives in an apartment where she pays rents.  She makes adult compromises -- her landlords don't allow pets so she spends a lot of time with a dog owned by her elderly neighbors.  She is gainfully employed at a job she is qualified for, which she likes and at which she is very good.  Unlike Colin, she has good friends she is not related to. 

Bernie would be far better off with one of her trivia night hookups than with loser Colin.