The Charm Offensive

Alison Cochrun's The Charm Offensive, published in 2021, is set behind the cameras of a long-running reality dating show. Dev Deshpande has always believed in the stories he helps to stage, and he has spent his career producing them for the show Ever After, where he scripts the perfect love story for each season's contestants even as his own relationships fall apart. Then the show casts Charlie Winshaw as its star: a disgraced technology founder who does not believe in true love and signed up mainly to repair his public image.

On camera Charlie is stiff and anxious, plainly at a loss about dating twenty women on national television, and off camera he is awkward and closed off. Dev is the producer responsible for making the season work regardless, and his job takes him and Charlie on a worldwide promotional tour with the contestants. The shoot is long, the cameras are always on, and neither of the two of them is being entirely honest about what is happening between them as the episodes are filmed.

Alison Cochrun is an American author of LGBTQ romance novels. The Charm Offensive was a finalist in the Romance category of the 2021 Bisexual Book Awards, and as of January 2026 a feature film adaptation was planned with the actor Nik Dodani.