It was great meeting you at apollycon. I have loved all of your books! You don't shy away from adding mental health issues and letting people who live with them know that they belong in the romance space as well.
Brother's best friend, banter, and chemistry.
Jude has been in Indira's life since they were kids but he has come back from his last medical humanitarian trip not the same. Loved planning for Collin and Jeremy's wedding. Indira's ex is in the wedding party so Jude steps up and becomes her fake dating arrangement. But then it becomes more as they realize that they feel safe with each other. This story was funny but was also dealing with some trauma before the relationship which is a healthy way to approach. Being honest and showing what that can look like is important.
I do love their joint project at the end because exactly as you said just because you can't see the wound doesn't mean it's not there. Mental health matters.

Thank you stmartinspress for the e-ARC for my honest and voluntary review.

Thank you for the opportunity to review this book! I really enjoyed the story as well as the characters!

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!

HOOOOOOH MY GOD. I loved this one SO MUCH. It was so incredible. I LOVE that she mixes serious mental health issues (in a non-performative way) with A LOT OF SPICE. It was VERY NICE. 🤌🏻

I NEED MORE. PLEASE. I COUNT DOWN TO THESE. GIVE ME MORE!

Super cute and sweet book - I love the fake dating trope, and this one did it well. Great read, I like this author a lot!

It pains me to give a Mazey Eddings book anything less than 5 stars, but I just didn’t love this one unfortunately. I think Indira & Jude were really great and I did enjoy their romance, but I think this one was just a little too (unexpectedly) heavy for me. I love seeing mental illness representation, but it’s definitely something I have to prepare myself for beforehand and I think I just wasn’t fully prepared for that heaviness all throughout the story and I feel like oftentimes it kind of overshadowed the romance aspect. Overall, it was an okay read, just not my favorite of the series. Thank you sm to SMP Romance & netgalley for providing me with an arc in exchange for an honest review!

The Plus One is the third installment of the A Brush With Love series. This book follows Indira and Jude, childhood enemies turned fake dating with a side of forced proximity. This was definitely my favorite in the series as it handles mental health topics with grace. As someone who suffers from anxiety and questioning her own self worth, reading about Indira’s journey was inspiring.

Thank you Mazey Eddings, St. Martin’s Press, St. Martin’s Griffin, and NetGalley for a digital arc of this book. It has easily become clary of my top ten books of 2023.

Indira and Jude had such a wonderful romance story. I loved that they had so much dislike for each other but as they reflected on their past they realized that they truly cared for each other all along. Both of them were able to be such safe spaces for each other and I loved that when Jude was going to shut down or pull back Indira wouldn't back down. There so many love stories that would have had a full break up session with the MMC figuring things out through reflection but I loved that these characters went through that questioning period of their relationship together. I really enjoyed all of the discussions surrounding therapy and how important that experience was for both main characters.
I can't wait to continue reading other books from Mazey Eddings!

“Memories of you are inevitable”

A super cute and well-executed romcom!

As Indira returns to her apartment to salvage her relationship, she finds her boyfriend with another woman. Upset and frustrated she decides to stay with her brother even though it’s only a few weeks before his wedding.

To her surprise, she finds Jude, her brother’s best friend, also at the apartment staying there until the wedding. Indira and Jude grew up together and always manage to get into each other’s nerves but there’s definitely a spark in there!

What I really liked about this book is how it handled mental health issues and how it avoided some of the common romcom themes that can be a bit annoying. It felt a bit long towards the end but I liked how things wrapped up and thoroughly enjoyed it!

“You can hurt and also be loved.
You can feel sadness and also laugh and feel joy. Good emotions can coexist with hard ones.
You can struggle and suffer and learn to heal while you also love. The best place to start is by giving yourself permission to feel with abandon. Feel everything.”

Oh my goodness. Mazey can do no wrong! Jude and Indira were everything. The spice had me weeping and fanning myself simultaneously, the hard topics were handled with so much care… I’m so grateful for Mazey, her stories, and the representation she puts out into the world!

The Plus One has all the tropes and feels I didn’t realize were going to be in the book. Going in I thought it was just a brother’s best friend, enemies to lovers, fake dating book, which it is but the focus on mental health brought another level to the book I wasn’t expecting.

Dira walks in on her ex cheating on her, so she packs up her cat and immediately goes to her brother’s house, where his best friend is of course staying with him leading up to the wedding. Jude, having been granted time off to attend his best friend’s wedding, is attempting to deal with extreme mental health issues and trying to hide all of that from everyone around him. The only one who can tell? His best friend’s little sister who he despises…or does he? When Dira realizes she’s going to have to see her ex at the upcoming wedding festivities, and realizing Jude needs someone to ground him from overstimulation, she suggests they fake a relationship in order to get through everything.

While this book is the third in a series it can be read as a standalone, which is what I inadvertently did. There’s heavy emphasis in mental health issues being dealt with by both main characters and the healing journey they both begin is interesting to read about.

Thank you St. Martin’s Press, Netgalley and Mazey Eddings for the ARC.

THE PLUS ONE, the newest installment in Mazey Eddings romance series, was unexpected in a great way. In the previous two books I haven't enjoyed Indira as a side character very much so I wasn't sure how I would feel about her own full-fledged novel, but I enjoyed her romantic arc almost as much as the last book. Mazey Eddings does lack some consistency to me as a romance author (first book was 2 star, second book was a 5 star, and here we are landing at 3.5 stars) but I do see so much potential for her. I love how she doesn't shy away from the gritty and the real in the inner lives of her characters.

this was SO GOOD mazey never disappoints! i wanted to give both indira and jude the biggest hugs :(

i’m so sad this series is over, i’m gonna miss them so much

Indira is a psychologist with Daddy issues whose big brother is getting married. Jude is the best friend of said brother, and a surgeon who has seen too much while working for the fictional version of the WHO in war torn countries around the world, and who is dealing with intense amounts of PTSD. They grew up hating each other, and now they're sick together for all the events leading up to (brother) Collin's wedding.

This is the third in the series about the Philly friends of Harper, Thu, Lizzie, and Indira. I'm almost sad Thu doesn't seem to be getting her own book, but she settled in with her dude during Harper's drama bomb of a starter book, and they're solid 2 books later, so I'm not seeing a book coming for her.

Going back to Indira. She's got some issues, and I feel like her stuff got pushed aside a lot to focus more on Jude and his trauma, because it's intense and there is a lot to unpack there. The mental health trauma is handled well. But man, I need to stop finding things that focus so heavily on anxiety, because it's all I've grabbed for the last 2 or 3 books I've finished. The romance is sweet, and is a enemies to lovers type of situation. I appreciate the... creativity in the bedroom scenes. I think I would've liked the book more if there was a little less focus on the mental trauma, but the author is great at handling it, so it's well done.

I received an Advanced Reader Copy via NetGalley in return for sharing my thoughts on this book. Thanks to the author and publisher for this opportunity!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 4.5/5
🌶️🌶️🌶️ 3/5

The problem with reading a book and waiting over a month to write the review is that you truly do not remember that much, which is so disappointing! I do remember that I absolutely loved this story. I loved the mental health representation. And most of all, I absolutely adored our hero, Jude! 😍

Thank you to Mazey Eddings, St. Martin’s Press, and NetGalley for an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I didn't realize this was book 3 in a series and after I finished it, I wanted to read the others. Interestingly enough, I had tried to read the first book and could never get into it because of that it's so surprising to me how much I enjoyed this one. I also think these can be read as standalone books, but with any series it's always more fun when you have more details about the characters.

I did go back and read book #2 and LOVED it! It was my favorite of the series. Each book is very different and I love that the author represents each MCs story so differently.

This sweet yet serious romcom had some of my favorite tropes: enemies to lovers, fake dating, and forced proximity!

Super cute, great mental health rep, and steamy! A solid romance, great chemistry and loved the plot overall. I need to go back & read the first two books but these were fine as a standalone.

I loved this book! This was my first Mazey Eddings book but now i think i need to go back and read the first two! I am a big fan. I loved Indira and Jude so much. I adored the relationship between the two. I loved that you could really see Jude coming into himself and all the work he was trying to do throughout the book. These two just complimented eachother so well. This was so fun and made me so sappy as well.

Mazey Eddings continues her streak of fantastic romance novels! As a sucker for books set at weddings, I particularly adored this one!

After Indira's life falls apart, she ends up crashing at her brother's house and discovers his best friend, and her childhood nemesis is also staying there for a while. Jude is back in the country for a few weeks to celebrate her brother's wedding, then he's scheduled to return to his job as a humanitarian doctor.

Little does anyone know, Jude is severely scarred by what he's seen in the war zones and natural disasters. He can hardly function, let alone pull himself together enough to celebrate. Indira is the only one who glimpses what's happening, so she agrees to help him through as his fake date.

Normally the fake dating trope gets old fast, but this was so much more meaningful than what you normally find in romances. Indira and Jude's relationship was heavily based on her ability to see his needs, encourage him to recognize what was happening and get help.

It was so easy to root for this couple! An easy five stars from me!

Indira’s life appears to be perfect - that is, until she wants in on her boyfriend with someone else. To make things worse, Indira and her ex are both in the same wedding party, so she is forced to be near him and his new girlfriend at all the wedding events. She strikes up a deal with Jude, another groomsman who is feeling lost and dealing with PTSD and anxiety from working as a traveling doctor, being deployed to emergencies around the world. Indira and Josh agree to pretend they are dating throughout the wedding festivities. But the more time they spend together, the more the relationship starts to feel real.

I love how beautifully Mazey Eddings incorporates mental health issues into her stories, and especially how her characters show an understanding of needing to work on themselves before being available to commit to a healthy relationship. I particularly loved Indira and Jude, and their relationship. The witty banter and chemistry was off the charts, and their transition from childhood enemies to kind of friends to lovers made sense to me - their shared history allowed for that transition to not feel so abrupt. This history allowed for a deeper level of vulnerability among the two characters. They were so kind and patient with each other, and I just adored their relationship.

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press, Macmillan Audio, and NetGalley for the advanced copies.