Review // The Charm Offensive

 

The Charm Offensive - Alison Cochrun

Published: 7th September 2021

Source: Purchased

Genre: Contemporary Romance, LGBTQ+

My Rating: 

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 open up to 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.

I had been excited about reading The Charm Offensive ever since I saw the first blog review about it. It sounded right up my street as an interesting LGBTQ+ contemporary romance read. I was so excited I actually found myself putting off reading because that is what I do every time I get excited about a new book. Put off reading until I forget why I wanted to read.

Unfortunately, I ended up reading it when I wasn’t in the mood for it. I was hoping once I started I would find myself growing into the right mood for it as that does happen sometimes. That didn’t end up being the case and I dragged myself through reading it. As such, my rating doesn’t truly reflect the book but instead reflects my mood when reading it as I couldn’t enjoy it as much as I hoped. I want to acknowledge that although I didn’t enjoy this one as much as I hoped I adored it for so many of the important conversations it had and the complexities of these characters and the journey they went through. Part of my rating reflects that, because even though I wasn’t in the right mood for this book I can recognise it was good and it might have been an amazing book on another day.

The star of this book, for me, was Charlie. He was an adorable guy who hadn’t had the right people around him in the past to help him realise he was not the problem. He decided to go on a dating show for all of the wrong reasons, he had hoped it would help show he wasn’t crazy or difficult to be around. It was a chance to boost his profile and show himself as real person. He wasn’t looking for love but he ended up finding it anyway, just not with any of the women he was meant to be dating for the show. It was great to see the struggle he faced with his OCD and anxiety and how that he could be perceived as difficult but only because people didn’t understand. He was sweet and honestly never expected to find love as he had never felt sexual attraction before. Until Dev. In some ways it seemed like the mental and emotional struggles of this book would centre on him but Charlie had been through therapy and recognised the importance of his mental health and was trying to build healthy coping strategies into his life. He had good people in his corner so you worried for him but not too excessively. Charlie’s book was about him discovering his sexuality and being brave enough to accept and tell people about it. He had backed himself into a corner signing the contract to star in the show which meant he had to date these women despite the fact he had no interest in any of them, and most of them had no interest in him either. Dev was the one who went through an emotional journey and discovered his faults and acknowledged the mental health journey he needed to go on.

Dev was a sweetheart who believed in love and had rose coloured glasses about the show he worked on. He never meant to develop feelings for Charlie but he did. But really this book was about him accepting his mental health struggles and acknowledging he had depression and then learning how best to live with this. He very much ignored it and tried to push those who cared for him away when he was in a depressive episode as he didn’t seem to want them to associate that side of himself with who he was. That was obviously a terribly unhealthy coping strategy but Dev seemed unwilling to accept help from others and was a touch too independent and isolated despite viewing himself as a romantic and a man who was looking for love and a relationship. It was great seeing him at the end getting help and developing healthier strategies in his life to cope. And most importantly allowing others close to him and help him when he needed it. It was about him acknowledging fairy tales aren’t true and that love is not easy. It doesn’t follow a set narrative and you cannot control it.

Honestly, this book did so much well and I wish I’d DNFed and tried to read it again another day as I would have loved it if I’d been in the right mood for it. Instead, I struggled through and acknowledge the potential there without truly connecting with it which was sad.

Have you read The Charm Offensive, if so what did you think? And if you're a mood reader what was the last book you read and you knew you should like but just weren't in the right mood for it?