A review by starklinqs
The Charm Offensive by Alison Cochrun

3.25

So I was super into this book at first but it unfortunately suffers from a few setbacks. While it delves into pretty deep topics in mental illness (as well as performative wokeness and heteronormativity), I couldn’t help but feel like the book rang hollow at a lot of points. Dev in particular - I’m not going to lie, I definitely get more excited when I see the main character in a book is Indian. I love characters who are like me and even if they don’t share my personality traits that doesn’t matter - representation is nuanced and varied and just because I don’t relate to one doesn’t make it bad. That being said, I did feel like a lot of the representation with Dev boiled down to “Dev’s dark brown skin against Charlie’s pale white skin.” There’s no real nuance for him being a first gen Indian American, or how that might affect his issues with therapy. When it came to Charlie vs Dev, Dev on the whole felt more villainized at times - he cuts off contact (and in what felt wildly unrealistic to me, that Dev would have no knowledge of certain things that happened by the end of the book), people flippantly tell Dev that “everyone” is in therapy and expect him to know that they seek professional help, it borders on portraying as him not making enough of an effort for therapy. 

There’s also just inconsistencies with the writing for him. He’s spent 6 years on this show but believes that the love on it is real (?) and is SHOCKED when people think differently. There’s an Indian queer romcom screenplay  that is apparently incredibly meaningful to him, yet it’s barely mentioned nor does it actually go anywhere. It just felt like there were a lot of aspects to Dev that didn’t feel fleshed out, and that really bothered me. 

I did however, find it cute and I love a nice queer romance. I like cheesiness and I do appreciate a happy ending. I might rate this lower later on but I don’t see myself giving this any less than a 3. For the most part I did like the book, but I wish white authors would put a little bit more thought into writing their POC. 
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