YMMV / Passport to Romance

• Ass Pull:
  • After Charlie quits Voyage and poaches viewers from it to promote their new independent vlog, it's a wonder why the story never established a legal contract between Charlie and Voyage, because Yvette could have easily sued them.
  • Charlie impulsively quits their job at Voyage without a plan for how to continue paying for their travels. Elliot suddenly decides to propose to his board to create him a new position as an international representative of the company, despite having little to no experience, so he can invest his shares in Charlie's new independent vlog. And apparently Marisa, Sumire, and Ahmed don't have jobs of their own so they can keep forming part of the crew.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Ahmed Khabbaz. One side sees him as a sweet and friendly character with a good sense of humor. The fact that he doesn't rush to hook up with Charlie is liked for being a fresh take on romance. The other side sees him as irresponsible for traveling with a group of strangers instead of his own teammates, which could've better prepared him for an upcoming match. His disdain for rich people is also very divisive. Some readers forgive this as part of his background and emotional baggage, while others see this as obnoxious and hypocritical, given that it never seems to damage his interactions with Elliot, and seems to have no problem with Elliot solving most of their problems with his wealth during their trip.
  • Marisa Pires. Some players like her for her fun-loving personality, giving meaningful advice to Ahmed's fans for believing in a false sense of love, and helping Ahmed boost his performance during a match. Other players dislike her for coming across as a selfish, melodramatic Womanchild who constantly whines about her deteriorating love life yet never attempts to talk to her boyfriend Tristao on their failing relationship.
• Broken Base: Some people enjoy the story because of its lighthearted tone, and find the love interests sweet and endearing. However, many people hate it because they find the characters, especially the main cast, dull and stereotypical, and also criticize the plot for being unfocused and lacking any real conflict. Earlier on, the story has been criticized for its initial lack of care for Ahmed's characterization, such as having him refuse alcohol because of his religion only to have him mention indulging in it. It has since been fixed, but it has left a sour taste on players who increasingly doubt Pixelberry's capability to treat their characters properly. The friendship between the main cast members is also criticized, with many saying that having them immediately become friends after meeting one another in a short period of time feels unrealistic. Moreover, the friend group is criticized for live-streaming illegal or reckless antics.
• Designated Villain: Yvette is depicted as an overbearing boss who cares only about Voyage's profits at the expense of the integrity of Charlie's vlog and their friends' feelings. However, she makes sure Charlie is doing their job properly, mainly because of the difficulty of maintaining a travel magazine and she's not responsible for their friends. Moreover, the premium choice to tell her off is depicted as a good thing despite her efforts to keep Charlie prepared for their trips.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • William Langdon is liked by players for his attempts to talk sense with his brother Elliot (a major scrappy) and responsibility to his family's company while still mourning for his parents' deaths.
  • The board member who objected to Elliot's promotion is also liked by players for her appearance and pointing out that Elliot is unqualified for a top position in Langdon Enterprises.
• Fan Nickname: Many detractors have given this story disparaging nicknames like "Passport to Boredom", "Passport to Rubbish", or "Passport to Jail" due to the boring story and the main cast's frequently indecent behavior that crosses into illegal territory.
• Harsher in Hindsight: While the visit to Notre-Dame was criticized because the Cathedral featured was a recycled backdrop instead of the real place, it becomes sad after the real Notre-Dame suffered fire damage on April 15th of 2019.
• Memetic Mutation: It's been a regular joke that Elliot is a serial killer who's stalking the party, especially Charlie, and that it's only a matter of time until he finally makes his true colors known.
• Narm: Charlie's vlog, despite appearing average, is always praised by the viewers as being genuinely entertaining content with many saying that they're going to recommend the vlog to their friends.
• The Scrappy:
  • Elliot Langdon is widely hated for making overly sarcastic remarks on French landmarks, Cultural Posturing of British culture at the expense of others, disrespecting local landmarks through trespassing and vandalism, and taking offense at Ahmed and Sumire's jokes on Marisa in the Catacombs even though he made snide remarks on Marisa during the group dinner with Yvette. Players also think his presence among the friend group is out of place because his immense wealth defeats Charlie's purpose of traveling on a budget, and he contributes nothing worthwhile to the vlog. His interactions with his brother William also depicts him as an entitled Manchild who avoids his responsibilities at his family's company.
  • The people who view Charlie's live-streams. Many find them irritating because they encourage irresponsible or illegal behavior and pressure Charlie to get with one of their love interests as soon as possible. One in particular is loathed for shipping Charlie with Elliot even if the player never picks romantic interactions with the latter.
  • Charlie is very divisive in comparison to other protagonists in Choices so far. Despite their portrayal as an Audience Surrogate for players who have never traveled before, many readers, including fans of the book, consider them too naive for the job, let alone qualified to travel alone. Many see Charlie proposing Yvette the idea of doing a travel blog, despite never having traveled themselves, as a way to get a fully paid trip to Europe. To make things worse, Charlie gets encouraged to break in and mess up with private property for the sake of getting viewers, and Chapter 6 reveals that they didn’t even bother to know the full names of the people they just met before recruiting them as travel companions. Players also criticized them for snooping through their friends' personal belongings without permission and getting their friends into trouble. They are also hated for quitting their job and acting disrespectful to Yvette even though she took a chance on them.
• Strawman Has a Point: The story depicts William Langdon, Yvette Mercer, and Ahmed's coach as overbearing authority figures, but they each have valid points on Elliot, Charlie, and Ahmed, respectively. William notes that the deaths of his and Elliot's parents is no excuse for the latter to evade his responsibilities. Yvette scolds Charlie for not taking their vlog seriously and continually keeps track on them. Ahmed's coach scolded Ahmed for not committing properly to his team by showing up late and unprepared for a soccer match.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • One primary criticism of the book is the absence of conflict among the gang. For example, Ahmed's disdain for the rich because he believes they're living decadent lifestyles should've created tensions between him and Elliot when the latter is revealed to be rich, but no such thing happened.
  • Many readers complain that the book barely explores all the other locations after Paris. The most glaring example is Berlin, Germany, where the gang only go clubbing and watch Ahmed's football game (activities that easily can be done in any other country in the world), right before they suddenly have to travel to Monaco on Yvette's sudden whim, without doing anything remotely German. In other words, the writers focused too much on the Romance part of the story and neglected the Passport part.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The whole gang (save for Sumire) has a lot of detractors based on the way the story intends to portray them, but clearly their actions don't match with what a protagonist should act, including vandalism, trespassing, theft, etc.
  • Charlie is supposed to be a Fish out of Water trying to navigate their way through foreign countries for their vlog and suffering under an overbearing boss. Instead, they come across as Too Dumb to Live because their potential activities involve indecent behavior like trespassing, vandalism, invading another person's privacy, and even theft. Aggravating matters is that they've gotten their friends in trouble in the process, such as partying in a club all night, resulting in them sleeping through their alarm and Ahmed showing up to his match late and unprepared.
  • Elliot's subplot tries to make the audience feel bad for him because he recently lost both his parents in an accident, so traveling with the gang is the way he is trying to cope. The problem is that he is Walking the Earth with money from his family business, leaving his older brother William to deal with everything else. When William has to resort to giving him an ultimatum between returning to his responsibilities or being separated from the board, Elliot gets upset, without considering that William is hurting too.
  • Ahmed is intended to be seen as a guy who can't stand the social differences between rich and poor people, claiming that the rich tend to waste their resources while many others in the world are suffering. Instead, his disdain of rich people and their lifestyles makes it look like it comes from an irrational inferiority complex, not helped by his random tantrum in Versailles and the lack of in-depth exploration of his background. Not to mention that he doesn’t seem to have a problem with Elliot solving all their travel problems with his family’s money^note Elliot offered his house in Switzerland during their train delay, used the family jet to get Charlie to Monaco in time, and created a new position for himself at the company to finance the rest of their travels across Europe, giving the impression that he has no problem with rich people as long as it helps them.