Every time I try to be vague about spoilers, I come back years later to have no idea what I was talking about. So here's exactly what I mean with my main criticism of Starter Villain, with spoilers for the entire book:

It seems evident that the goal was to dismiss the male power fantasy of James Bond stories, and dispel any allure of super villains (or real-life billionaires) as being cool, elegant, geniuses. And I'm all for that. But the book is entirely made up of one scene after another with the protagonist acknowledging that he's out of his element, that it stopped feeling like "lovable schlub gets in over his head" and it almost started to feel like a different kind of fantasy. "Wait a second... does this guy actually get off on being a beta?"

Even after the parts where Charlie has a unique insight into a situation to actually figure something out (the billionaires are all bankrupt), or to help the other characters (the dolphins), that's undermined by the ending. Which is structured to make it absolutely clear that Charlie had no real influence on anything that happened, and he accomplished nothing. And for the implausible ending to work, it had to mean that he was surrounded by super-heroes: two super-capable hench people that could do just about anything, and two super-villains (one deceased) who came up with a flawless master plan that accounted for every contingency.

It's such a baffling choice, because it seemed adamant that Charlie not be allowed to do something genuinely impactful, but any claims to being more realistic or less of a power fantasy were belied by the ending. It just seems like the story chose the worst protagonist, because he doesn't do anything. Even making Hera the main character would've made more sense.