After spending three years working as a surgeon in war-torn countries, Jude has briefly returned home for his best friend Collin’s wedding and is having trouble adjusting back to civilian life. Indira (whom we were briefly introduced to in A Brush with Love and Lizzie Blake’s Best Mistake) is a children’s psychiatrist who, after walking in on her boyfriend with another woman, decides to move in with her brother Collin and his fiancé… Unbeknownst to Indira, her childhood enemy Jude is also staying with Collin. Eventually Jude and Indira call it truths and decide to be each other’s fake dates during the wedding festivities; Jude needs Indira to help him deal with his PTSD and Indira needs a date to save face around her cheating ex, who is also in the wedding party. The more time Indira and Jude spend together, the harder it is to deny their growing feelings for each other.
The Plus One is the third installment of Mazey Eddings’ A Brush with Love trilogy, but can be read as a standalone. It’s a contemporary rom-com featuring the childhood enemies to lovers, forced proximity, and fake dating tropes whilst exploring themes such as mental health, love and heartbreak, marriage and divorce, trauma and war, family and found family, commitment, and abandonment. The Plus One is ideally suited for fans of books like The Charm Offensive by Alison Cochrun, Mr. Wrong Number by Lynn Painter, Count Your Lucky Stars by Alexandria Bellefleur, The Ex Talk by Rachel Lynn Solomon, Set On You by Amy Lea, Paris Daillencourt is About to Crumble by Alexis Hall, The Co-op by Tarah Dewitt, or The Singles Table by Sara Desai. Trigger warnings for The Plus One include PTSD, anxiety and depression, divorce and abandonment, and cheating.
First off, the cute childhood memories and connections that Eddings interwove into Jude and Indira’s love story were delightful and so was Jude and Indira’s funny and witty banter! I appreciated that, even though there were a fair number of events leading up to the wedding, the novel wasn’t overly focused on the wedding as due to the cover art and title, one might assume that most of the novel would be set at the wedding. Without spoiling anything, a highlight of the book was Jude and Indira’s Hallowe’en shenanigans and I really appreciated that Jude and Indira didn’t experience the stereotypical third act break-up.
Although all the therapy sessions and talk of mental health in The Plus One was refreshing and relevant, at times, I found it to be a bit much and some readers may find these scenes to be triggering or challenging to read. Other slight let-downs was hoping for the main characters from A Brush with Love and Lizzie Blake’s Best Mistake to appear a bit more and although it was necessary to the story, all of the contract negotiations and legalities (related to Jude’s humanitarian work) that were included at the end of the novel weren’t enjoyable.
Overall, I was a bit disappointed as I didn’t enjoy The Plus One as much as I did the first two books in the series, but if you like fake dating, forced proximity, and enemies to lovers, you should definitely check out The Plus One!
The Plus One is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore.
Will you be picking up The Plus One? Tell us in the comments below!
Synopsis | Goodreads
What starts out as a fake wedding date turns into something these childhood enemies never expected in The Plus One, a sparkling romantic comedy by Mazey Eddings.
She’s not looking to fix him. She’s looking to love him, if he’ll let her in.
Some facts are indisputable. The sun rises in the east, sets in the west. Gravity exists. Indira doesn’t like Jude. Jude doesn’t like Indira. But what happens when these childhood enemies find the only thing they can rely on is each other?
On paper, Indira has everything together. An amazing job, a boyfriend, and a car. What more could a late twenty-something ask for? But when she walks in on her boyfriend in an amorous embrace with a stranger, that perfect on paper image goes up in flames.
Jude has nothing together. A doctor that’s spent the last three years traveling the world to treat emergencies and humanitarian crises, a quick trip home for his best friend’s wedding has him struggling to readjust.
Thrust into an elaborate (and ridiculously drawn out) wedding event that’s stressing Jude beyond belief and has Indira seeing her ex and his new girlfriend far more frequently than any human should endure, the duo strike a bargain to be each other’s fake dates to this wedding from hell. The only problem is, their forced proximity and fake displays of affection are starting to feel a bit…real, and both are left grappling with the idea that a situation that couldn’t be worse, is made a little better with the other around.
