Take a photo of a barcode or cover
pagesbyolivia 's review for:
The Charm Offensive
by Alison Cochrun
DID NOT FINISH: 0%
I was so excited for this book because the book I read and loved before this (He’s to die for) was pitched as Brooklyn 99 meets The Charm Offensive so naturally my next read had to be The Charm Offensive. Sadly, this completely missed the mark for me.
For of all, the characters‘ motivations made zero sense. Dev claims he loves true love and that’s why he works on a tacky dating reality tv show. Apparently, he truly believes that every single one of the women is there to find true love. You cannot make be believe that an adult in his late 20s is so delusional that he doesn’t know what reality tv, especially dating reality tv is about.
Charlie’s motivation, to salvage his image by being Prince Charming, also makes no sense. Apparently, he has been blacklisted in Silicon Valley because he is difficult to work with and getting publicly engaged to a woman on a dating reality tv show will somehow rectify that. I doubt that a bunch of Silicon Valley dudes care about that. Like how do you get from ‚guy wants to work in tech‘ to ‚guy should enter a reality tv show‘? It makes no sense.
But what made me dnf this book was how Charlie was treated. It made me feel so icky and uncomfortable and literally made my skin crawl. He is very autism coded but according to other reviews it is explained he has (social) anxiety and OCD but it honestly just feel like the author chose those term because they’re mostly seen as „fun“ and „quirky“ while autism is more of a „problem“ and she wanted Charlie to be a hot but quirky character without having to do the work to actually portray neurodivergence well and he felt more like a caricature than a well thought out character.
Additionally, Charlie was treated horribly, no one on the production team cared about him and making accommodations or was even compassionate, not even Dev. Right at their first meeting, Charlie told Dev that he doesn’t like to be touched without a warning and what does Dev immediately do? Touches him without a warning. Even if there was a reason (mic still on, he switched it off because he didn’t want Charlie to say anything that was later going to be taken out of context), he could’ve at least tried to indicate what he was going to do. And while he at least starts using hand sanitizer, he still proceeds to just touch Charlie until he explains that he doesn’t like to be touched in more detail and that’s when Dev finally apologised and vows to do better but like you couldn’t muster that compassion before?? He already told you he doesn’t like to be touched and once should be enough, no questions asked.
Also, Dev takes Charlie out for brunch on a practice date and doesn’t care about his diet at all. Charlie is gluten free and vegan and when he tells Dev, his answer is just that they’re in LA, Charlie will find something at the spot they’re at. Spoiler alert, they serve French toast and other gluten including non vegan items so Charlie orders fruit. As a fellow vegan, the disregard and blatant dismissal of Charlie’s dietary restrictions was the final straw for me that made me want to dnf this book because it’s really not that hard to ask if a person has dietary restrictions beforehand and as Dev said, they’re in LA, they could’ve found a spot where Charlie could eat anything besides fruit but Dev just didn’t care.
The only thing I’ve liked up to where I read were the allusions to Charlie being asexual and I hope this gets explored more in the rest of the book.
For of all, the characters‘ motivations made zero sense. Dev claims he loves true love and that’s why he works on a tacky dating reality tv show. Apparently, he truly believes that every single one of the women is there to find true love. You cannot make be believe that an adult in his late 20s is so delusional that he doesn’t know what reality tv, especially dating reality tv is about.
Charlie’s motivation, to salvage his image by being Prince Charming, also makes no sense. Apparently, he has been blacklisted in Silicon Valley because he is difficult to work with and getting publicly engaged to a woman on a dating reality tv show will somehow rectify that. I doubt that a bunch of Silicon Valley dudes care about that. Like how do you get from ‚guy wants to work in tech‘ to ‚guy should enter a reality tv show‘? It makes no sense.
But what made me dnf this book was how Charlie was treated. It made me feel so icky and uncomfortable and literally made my skin crawl. He is very autism coded but according to other reviews it is explained he has (social) anxiety and OCD but it honestly just feel like the author chose those term because they’re mostly seen as „fun“ and „quirky“ while autism is more of a „problem“ and she wanted Charlie to be a hot but quirky character without having to do the work to actually portray neurodivergence well and he felt more like a caricature than a well thought out character.
Additionally, Charlie was treated horribly, no one on the production team cared about him and making accommodations or was even compassionate, not even Dev. Right at their first meeting, Charlie told Dev that he doesn’t like to be touched without a warning and what does Dev immediately do? Touches him without a warning. Even if there was a reason (mic still on, he switched it off because he didn’t want Charlie to say anything that was later going to be taken out of context), he could’ve at least tried to indicate what he was going to do. And while he at least starts using hand sanitizer, he still proceeds to just touch Charlie until he explains that he doesn’t like to be touched in more detail and that’s when Dev finally apologised and vows to do better but like you couldn’t muster that compassion before?? He already told you he doesn’t like to be touched and once should be enough, no questions asked.
Also, Dev takes Charlie out for brunch on a practice date and doesn’t care about his diet at all. Charlie is gluten free and vegan and when he tells Dev, his answer is just that they’re in LA, Charlie will find something at the spot they’re at. Spoiler alert, they serve French toast and other gluten including non vegan items so Charlie orders fruit. As a fellow vegan, the disregard and blatant dismissal of Charlie’s dietary restrictions was the final straw for me that made me want to dnf this book because it’s really not that hard to ask if a person has dietary restrictions beforehand and as Dev said, they’re in LA, they could’ve found a spot where Charlie could eat anything besides fruit but Dev just didn’t care.
The only thing I’ve liked up to where I read were the allusions to Charlie being asexual and I hope this gets explored more in the rest of the book.