Why Are You Here?
I’m Robin Levine Shobin. Former Wall Street exec. Current chronic oversharer.
Charlotte’s Book is where I investigate beauty, aging and all the expensive, confusing shit women are expected to somehow figure out on their own.
Facelifts. Tweakments. Skincare. Hormones. Money. Dating. Divorce. Aging. Good doctors. Bad advice. Expensive mistakes.
I research it, try it, pay for it and tell you what I wish someone had told me first.
My path here has been somewhat unconventional.
In my 20s, I became the youngest Director at JPMorgan, where I headed the energy sector in research. I stayed for nearly 15 years.
I am psycho about research. It’s probably the one thing Wall Street permanently did to my brain, and I now apply it to absolutely everything.
I later left finance and raised $20 million to build Halo Hydration with investors including Pitbull and a few other fun celebrities.
It failed spectacularly.
That gave me a very expensive education in startups, awful co-founders and what not to do with $20 million.
Then came my divorce.
In 2019, my personal financial life blew up and I had to figure out how to rebuild it. I started renovating homes in upstate New York, sometimes with friends, which eventually helped get me back on my feet financially.
I still co-own Woodstock Brewing with my ex-husband, a business we launched in 2018, where I learned another important business lesson:Perhaps don’t hire the 19-year-old bartender your 45-year-old husband will eventually cheat on you with.
You really can’t learn everything at business school.
So yes, I’ve done a lot. Finance. Startups. Real estate. Marriage. Divorce. Dating. Beauty. And a facelift.
Collectively, it’s given me a front-row seat to money, image, aging, ambition and the enormous gap between how a life looks from the outside and what is actually going on.
These days, I split my time between Australia, Bali and the U.S. I’m 48, divorced, finally in a great relationship after plenty of dating detours, and still as obsessed with aesthetics as I was at 27.
The difference now?
I have far fewer illusions and a lot more information.
Why I Write Charlotte’s Book
I’m not a beauty editor, and I don’t want to be one. I don’t care about comps, brand trips, or playing nice with PR. I care about being obsessive. And I care about telling the truth, even when it’s messy.
When I first launched Charlotte’s Book as a side project in 2014, it quickly grew to nearly 200,000 monthly visitors. We had a partnership with Yahoo, were featured in Refinery29, Town & Country, justBOBBI, and more. Then my personal life blew up. My marriage collapsed in spectacular fashion. I went silent. I was too busy surviving. My writing also went dark for several years.
When I came back, I wrote one of my most-read essays ever: “Divorce, Affairs, and Friedrich Nietzsche.” It resonated because women in their 40s and 50s aren’t just talking about facelifts and fillers - we’re talking about betrayal, reinvention, money, and survival. I am rebuilding my old website here on Substack years later. I hope you enjoy reading it!
Why Subscribe?
If you want glossy, polite, and PR-approved — don’t subscribe. If you want the truth, with all the messy details, welcome. I hope reading this feels like sitting on the sofa with the brutally honest friend who’s actually had the surgery (or spent the money) and will tell you where it sucked and where it was worth every penny. And sometimes? You’ll get dating advice, divorce drama, travel recs, and the excellent things actually worth your money.
