The Charm Offensive: A Novel

by Alison Cochrun

A MOST ANTICIPATED ROM-COM SELECTED BY * BUZZFEED * LGBTQ READS * BUSTLE * THE NERD DAILY * ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT * FROLIC MEDIA * AND MORE!

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“The Charm Offensive will sweep you off your feet.” —PopSugar

​​​​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.

• ISBN10: 1982170719
• ISBN13: 9781982170714
• Publish Date: 2 March 2023 (first published 7 September 2021)
• Publish Status: Out of Stock
• Out of Print: 12 January 2023
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Simon & Schuster
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 368
• Language: English

Reviews

[lessthelonely]

So! I'm going to rewrite this review.

I reread this book after purchasing it physically - it was glorious to read again, simply put. I remembered quite a bit, but a lot of things I didn't remember made me fall in love with the book and its characters just like before.

This book goes there with its mental health conversations and the discussion of the toxic parts behind reality TV shows and even the relation with work culture. Dev is truly so relatable to me and Charlie? I am not at liberty to discuss, because I would actually go feral.

I once didn't give this book the 5 stars it deserves, but I'm tired of pretending: this is one hell of a book, completely capable of making me cry and it deserves each of the 5 stars. I will die on this hill.

ON ANOTHER NOTE: I've seen people DNF this book because the writing is fanfiction-like? What? I have read some fanfiction, and I'm tired of pretending fanfiction doesn't set the standard for romance.

[Sarah Poultney]

I received a galley of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review:

4.5 Stars

As someone who has never even seen a single episode of The Bachelor, I was genuinely shocked by how delightfully enthralling I found this book. Charlie Winshaw and Dev Deshpande are a fairy tale couple for the ages, and the cast surrounding them is so vibrant and full of life I could read a whole series books focused on them.

Charlie Winshaw is, for all intents and purposes, the perfect star of Ever After, a show very much like the Bachelor, but Fairy Tale themed. He's perfect- except for the fact that off-camera, he is an anxious wreck who doesn't believe in love.

Dev Deshpande works on Ever After because he wants nothing more than true love, and he's here to help other people find it. So what is he supposed to do when the show's next star vomits on his shoes on the first night and informs him this whole fairy tale is fake?

The best thing about this book is that these characters are real people, with very real emotions, in contrast with the fictional romance that they're attempting to build around themselves. There are discussions about mental health, romance, and being your authentic self in this book that I have yet to find elsewhere in a YA romance, and they are so wonderfully written and carefully considered that it is absolutely worth anyone's time to read. 

There are a few cheesy stumbling points in the writing, but those moments are so minimal, and are somehow so fitting for a book about the cheesiest reality show concept I've ever heard.