The Plus One by Mazey Eddings: Book Review

The Plus One explores mental health with the care and sensitivity I’ve come to love from this author. It is funny, informative, and a pleasure to read. It is the third book in Mazey Edding’s A Brush With Love series but can easily be read as a standalone.

Acknowledgments:

Thank you to St. Martin’s Griffin and Netgalley for the ARC of this book. The thoughts and opinions expressed here are my own.

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From The Publisher:

Some facts are indisputable. The sun rises in the east, sets in the west. Gravity exits. 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.

What starts out as a fake wedding date turns into something these childhood enemies never expected in the next sparkling romantic comedy by Mazey Eddings.

My Thoughts:

I love a good friends-to-enemies romance and this was one of the best I’ve read. The characters and their backstories are interesting, well-developed and sensitively written. This author writes in #OwnVoices and this book is my favourite in the series.

Indira is a psychiatrist who has everything she could ever want. She’s recently walked in on her boyfriend and his lover and requests to move in with her soon-to-be-married brother. What she doesn’t expect is that her brother’s best friend Jude has returned home for a few weeks and is also staying with her brother.

Jude is a physician who works with casualties in war-torn countries. He’s seen some horrific things and feels he should be able to save everyone. Suffering from PTSD, he’s changed from the man who left a few years ago. Only Indira can see that this man is very ill.

As Indira assists Jude to feel safe the two begin to appreciate one another and reflect upon their shared childhood. Indira’s ex is also a member of the wedding party and is invited to many of the wedding events with his new girlfriend. Indira needs a plus one and Jude needs to have an escape to leave the events when they become too much for him to bear. A romance begins which is tender and respectful and later steamy. But what will happen when Jude needs to return to his job and further trauma after the wedding?

This book goes a long way in normalizing mental health and receiving psychotherapy. While it has some serious moments, these are well-balanced with humour. Eddings does this extremely well and that is why she has become one of my auto-read authors.

I highly recommend this book to those readers who enjoy romance or books with characters with mental health challenges.

What I Liked:

• The normalization of mental health through interesting, well-developed characters
• The level of care and compassion when telling this story
• A well-employed enemies to lovers trope

Other Books I’ve Reviewed in this Series:

A Brush With Love (A Brush With Love, #1)

Lizzie Blake’s Best Mistake (A Brush With Love #2)