Review: ‘The Charm Offensive’ by Alison Cochrun (a KU TikTok rom-com worth the hype)
I, Sophie, am in the midst of an insane reading July. I am attempting to read 30 books in 30 days and documenting it day by day on TikTok (come and follow along @booksburgersandbackpacks)…
Yep. 30 books. 30 days.
And quite frankly, I’m smashing it. As I write this it’s day eight and I’m perfectly on target, and buzzing about one of the last books I read: ‘The Charm Offensive’ by Alison Cochrun.
While this LGBT+ rom-com has been doing the round on BookTok, I actually stumbled across it on BookTube when one of my faves, Sydney from Syd BookWorrom cried over it during a reading vlog. (Side note: I love BookTube and still get so many recommendations from the platform.)
I snapped it up when it was on a delicious Kindle deal for 99p (but it’s now available on Kindle Unlimited!) and I devoured it. But before we go any further, I should probably tell you what it’s all about:
In this witty and heartwarming romantic comedy—reminiscent of Red, White & Royal Blue and One to Watch—an awkward tech wunderkind on a reality dating show goes off-script when sparks fly with his producer.
Dev Deshpande has always believed in fairy tales. So it’s no wonder then that he’s spent his career crafting them on the long-running reality dating show Ever After. As the most successful producer in the franchise’s history, Dev always scripts the perfect love story for his contestants, even as his own love life crashes and burns. But then the show casts disgraced tech wunderkind Charlie Winshaw as its star.
Charlie is far from the romantic Prince Charming Ever After expects. He doesn’t believe in true love, and only agreed to the show as a last-ditch effort to rehabilitate his image. In front of the cameras, he’s a stiff, anxious mess with no idea how to date twenty women on national television. Behind the scenes, he’s cold, awkward, and emotionally closed-off.
As Dev fights to get Charlie to connect with the contestants on a whirlwind, worldwide tour, they begin to open up to each other, and Charlie realizes he has better chemistry with Dev than with any of his female co-stars. But even reality TV has a script, and in order to find to happily ever after, they’ll have to reconsider whose love story gets told.
Sounds cute, right? It is! It’s romantic and swoony and funny as a rom-com should be, but it’s also so much more than that too.
As well as being a mash-up of ‘Love Island’ and ‘The Bachelor’, ‘The Charm Offensive’ explores mental health and mental illness in real depth, but without making it feel voyeuristic or preachy. Dev has depression and Charlie has OCD, generalised anxiety and a panic disorder. These aren’t thrown at you straight away; you get to know about the guys and their struggles along with their relationship. It’s sensitively handled with discussions of therapy, and the lack of kindness and sympathy that have been afforded to both of them along the way. It made me tear up a few times, especially when Charlie opened up to Dev about the way he was treated by his parents, classmates and former business partner which led to him saying yes to appear on ‘Ever After’.
Sexuality and the freedom to explore and investigate his without judgement or the need to put yourself in a box is also handled with a similarly sensitive touch in the novels. Most of the cast of the novel identifies as queer in some way, and the characters and the novel in general highlights both the micro-aggressions and outright aggressions that they experience working in television, particularly reality television, and while travelling to more conservative locations around the world.
Charlie’s character arc is truly special and the way he discovered his sexuality and came to understand the way he was standing in front of his own feelings was really touching; it’s beautifully handled and I fell so in love with Charlie and watching him blossom under Dev’s encouragement actually made me a bit emotional! They’re a wonderful pair and I believed in their relationship 100%.
Something I do want to raise about ‘The Charm Offensive’ is something that was highlighted in a review I spotted on Goodreads when I was about halfway through the book. Dev is Indian-American, but his heritage and its cultural impact is missing from his personality, upbringing and the portrayal of his parents in the novel. Shamefully, this isn’t something I’d noticed until it was pointed out by this review (you can read the review here!), but once I went back in with that on my mind, it was painfully noticeable. I encourage you to read the review, hear from the voices of the Indian and Indian-American communities and make your own judgement based on those.
I thoroughly enjoyed ‘The Charm Offensive’ and it’s been a highlight of the reading challenge for me so far! Have I got what it takes to read 30 books in 30 days? Follow along on TikTok and find out!
Have you read ‘The Charm Offensive’ yet? Is it on your TBR?
Written by Sophie
