Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 5/5
Spice: 🌶️🌶️🌶️ 3/5


Tropes/Topics:
Fake Dating ✔️
Brother's Best Friend✔️
Childhood Enemies to Lovers✔️
Forced Proximity✔️
Positive Mental Health Representation✔️
Rom Com✔️


❌Check TW's before Reading❌


Since they were children Indira and Jude have DESPISED each other and now that they're adults their dynamic hasn't changed but their lives have. Indira's 'perfect' life (only on paper) is crumbling before her eyes and Jude has NOTHING together (not even on paper).
Being around each other their entire lives have earned them both a spot in Collin's wedding, a wedding that is becoming more elaborate as times goes in. Indira HAS to be there, she's Collin's sister after all, and well.. so does Jude (best friend's duties and what not).
Jude is stressed and Indira does NOT want to see her ex. The plan that they come up with? Be each other's plus one. But what happens when the 'forced' proximity is no longer forced,& how to go about when the 'fake' P.D.A's, feel real?


I N D I R A_P A P A D A K I S :
this STRONG QUEEN brought SASSINESS, IMPECCABLE ✨VIBES✨, AND the HUMOR with a side of THERAPY. & let me just state that I LIVE AND STAN a self-reflecting QUEEN.


J U D E__B A I L E Y
Jude, baby... how I WISH I was able to hold you through the pages.This KING?! I applaud this fictional MAN for going through what he DID & realizing he needed someone to help him. Was his journey easy? FXCK NO! But we don't judge journeys here.
Also the way he fell for our girl?! SWOON🥰 & add in his dirty MOUTH?! 🥵! my gahhhh! LOVE YOU JUDE!

I& J
Indira and Jude are the DEFINITION of chemistry! 🧪
From their TEASING BANTER, to the casual TOUCHES, to the quick GLANCES. EVERY little small detail between the two, kept adding up, until THAT time came between the two. & when it did?! 🧨 EXPLOSIVE!!


Mazey Eddings... STAN👏🏽DING👏🏽 OHH👏🏽VAYYYYY👏🏽TIOOOOOOON!!!!👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽
It's hard to explain how The Plus One spoke to my ENTIRE SOUL but let me tell you what I FELT. Mazey Eddings made me SWOOOOON 🥰, made me UGLY CRY. 😭 . She made me LAUGH 😂 and ultimately, FALL IN LOVE.

The Plus one is more than just a book about 2 people falling in love. It's about 2 people learning to love THEMSELVES first (FLAWS AND ALL), ACCEPTING help, & going through life TOGETHER by being each other's person... each other's ANCHOR & for that.. THANK YOU, MAZEY! Thank you♥️

This is an enemies to lovers, brother's best friend with fake dating romance. Indira temporarily moves in with her brother after finding out her boyfriend is cheating on her. Her brother is about to get married, and she, her ex, and her brother's best friend are all in the wedding. She and Jude, the brother's best friend, decide to fake date to, in a way, get back at the ex-boyfriend. This novel to me felt a little bit slower-paced just because they talked a lot about Indira and Jude dealing with trauma. Jude works as a doctor overseas and has been in a lot of dangerous locations where he is performing emergency medicine and has a seen a lot of people die. Much of novel discusses him working through his PTSD, while Indira works through her feelings of abandonment. (Her father left them when she was a child.) I liked the way they approached mental health in this book and discussed therapy. It is a little bit of a heavier novel, so if you're looking for something very lighthearted, this might not be it. It does have a happy resolution as they work together to heal each other.

I enjoyed this book. I loved the connection between the love interests and seeing their points of view. It was occasionally hard for me to connect when the male love interest would pull away, but the author did a great job of brining it back together for the ending.

I have decided that Indira is the embodiment of whatever the opposite of Coldplay’s ‘Fix You’ is.

Mazey Eddings has done it again with The Plus One, a lovely romance with all the spice, emotions, and *gasp* no third-act breakup! What more could one want in a romance novel? I was enamored with Indira and Jude’s story from the moment we met them both. The portrayal of PTSD was done gracefully, and it highlighted the very real struggles many individuals go through dealing with an “invisible illness.”

The Plus One is certainly a romance must-read for 2023!

Thank you to NetGalley & St. Martin’s Press for my Digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

i love love all of Mazey’s work. her books just keep getting better and better! i gave 5 stars to both a brush with love and lizzie blake’s best mistake and i feel like the plus one has snatched the throne!!!

this time around in the plus one, we follow Indira on her road of healing and love.
i really love and admire the author's commitment to eliminate stigma surrounding mental health issues and crafting love stories for every kind of person. so that nobody will feel left out.

despite having a harsher tone than the earlier books, this one is still a romance. Mazey was trying to convey and remind us that love is being someone's safe place for them to be themselves and being there to support them, instead of trying to fix them.
so inspiring. be sure to check the TWs!

interesting tropes:
👩🏻‍❤️‍👨🏻 fake dating
🧎🏻‍♀️brother's best friend
👩🏻‍🤝‍👨🏼 characters in therapy

it is a beautifully written book, and i would read anything by Mazey without a second thought.

thank you to @netgalley for this e-arc! looooved it xx

Can Mazey Eddings write my love story? I would trust her with my life.

This book was amazing but I'm not surprised. Mazey is a genius. The world she has created with these characters feels real and lived in. They are relatable and vulnerable and I would 110% believe you if you said she'd taken some pages out of my diary to use as plot because books shouldn't have me this emotionally destroyed.

It's:
- childhood enemies to lovers (a new trope for me).
- FAKE DATING
- brothers best friend (and best man)
- one tent? trope
- normalizing going to therapy and having a healthy relationship with it.

This book is for all of us who rewatched that one episode of Gilmore girls when Luke shows Lorelei the horoscope she gave him that he's been holding onto for years.

Buy this book. My staff pick sticker will be on every cover.

Thanks NetGalley!

I heard and read many people gush about this book and i was really excited about it, it sounded right up my alley and i was right! I fell in love with these characters. I related to many of them and i cried a few times because of it. I count that as a win. The chemistry was sizzling and they were meant for each other.
I honestly can’t think of anything I disliked, you should read it asap if you are looking for a swoon worthy romance book!

The banter between the two main characters was amazing! The character growth was fantastic. Plot flowed easily. Great read!

This book was so great! I really adore how the author portrayed mental health. This depiction can be so relatable to many people. It's nice to see! I also found the book funny, which is something that doesn't happen often for me. The banter was fantastic and the characters have depth! It was funny, steamy and really showcased all types of relationships! Such a good read!

I really liked this whole series. I do think that A Brush with Love was the best book in this series though. But I enjoyed all of the books. I love how Mazey Eddings makes her characters seem real. She shows that it is okay to struggle. I did enjoy this whole series and I think I would suggest it.

Thank you, NetGalley, Mazey Eddings, and Sr. Martin’s Press for letting me read this book!

I am a huge "enemies-to-lovers" fan and was ready to tackle this book with knowing about this trope alone, but this book definitely was more than I could ask for. It consists of:

- childhood-enemies-to-lovers
- brother's-best-friend
- fake dating
- PTSD/traumatic themes

The development of Indira and Jude was incredible. The banter that they had was but one can tell they had this genuine care for each other made me yearn for more scenes. Each scene was **chef's kiss**!

All the following components felt woven nicely with the overall story and kept the plot to be well-paced, which included:

- Indira's brother's wedding
- Backstories of each of their families
- Presence of Indira's friends (which I wish we got to see more of)
- Impact of their work in each of their lives

The characters felt more real with their internal struggles and it was well written, the reader can definitely feel the impact of the struggles and how it does take time to process these feelings. The Plus One has this overall nice balance of romance between the character and personal growth as individuals as well. I definitely blasted through this book and could not put it down!

Absolutely loved this charming, hilarious, heartwarming romance. I adored A Brush With Love but I think I liked this one even more, though overall, the way Mazey Eddings handles mental health combined with contemporary romance is so well done and moving (she made me cry with this!). I loved Indira and Jude, from their banter to their belief in each other to the way they figured things out. Their friends and family were also fantastic supporting characters, including both the preexisting characters (Harper, Lizzie, Thu, their partners) and Indira’s brother and his fiancé. The friend, sibling, and group dynamics were wonderful and added so much humor and a sense of a full life to the book. Indira and Jude’s mental health struggles were beautifully explored, given plenty of time and weight and respect, and not tied up perfectly (nobody is just “fixed” at the end - it’s truly about healing and how it’s a process). I’ve loved these books and the ways Eddings has written layered stories while also making them laugh-out-loud funny, genuine, and swoony.

THE PLUS ONE was equal parts a hilarious & heartfelt exploration of trauma -- the way it shapes us, the lies it tells us, and how messy the process of healing from it can be. Indira & Jude are both terrified to love because of their trauma, but they do it anyway. And this story is a promise to readers who can relate to both characters that they aren't too broken to be fixed, that they deserve love & happiness, and that it's never too late to heal or choose a bright future for yourself in spite of your past. Eddings tacked the topics surrounding mental health, trauma, and healing with such grace and nuance -- I was in awe.

What an unexpectedly heartwarming and layered story! I’ve not had the pleasure of reading the Brush With Love series (I hope that’s the correct name for them) but I’d be very interested in reading Harper and Lizzie’s stories as well.
Indira and Jude have excellent banter; this is the sort of enemies to lovers trope that really works for me. This trope often has better success with characters who already know one another, and the brothers best friend is a great way of introducing it. Throw in some fake dating, and this is the sort of story I love to devour. I definitely appreciated that despite the romance of it all, Plus One doesn’t shy away for from its flawed characters. Each protagonist is attempting to manage their real life issues, and the story isn’t all sunshine and rainbows for everyone, even once their love story blossoms. The love between them feels real, and fragile, and like it will require actual work on the parts of the characters.
The wedding prep setting is the perfect backdrop for quirky characters-I’ll take a frazzled bridal party saving the wedding any day. In short, Plus One was an enjoyable, down-to-earth romance infused with just enough obstacle and humour to keep me interested the whole way through.

I had mixed feelings about this one, but only because it wasn’t what I was expecting. When Indira gave her cheating boyfriend a proper dressing-down, I got excited for a sharp, funny story. However, when Jude was introduced, I quickly realized that this tale was going to be on the much more serious side. My heart ached for Jude and I really appreciated the way Eddings approached his mental health. I’ve tired of the fake-dating-to-real-dating trope, but Indira and Jude’s story had a lot of additional meaningful layers that made it truly special. Don’t go into this book expecting a lighthearted romp but instead prepare yourself for real characters with real problems. Kudos to the author for being vulnerable with her readers!

Indira is a psychiatrist who works with kids outpatient at a hospital in Philly and she cares about the things and people in her life A LOT. That’s her thing. Caring. So even though she isn’t happy in her relationship with her boyfriend, she cares enough to try to see it through…unfortunately, she walks in on him cheating on her and covered in peanut butter. Obviously she is hurt and frustrated and runs to her brother’s house to stay while she makes plans for the future and who opens the door but her BROTHER’S BEST FRIEND and her CHILDHOOD NEMESIS, Jude Bailey.

Jude has returned from serving as a surgeon on the frontlines of humanitarian crises and he is experiencing some hard times trying to adjust to life back home (spoiler: it’s PTSD but he doesn’t want to admit it to himself). Every loud or unexpected noise and touches make him flinch, freeze, and escape into himself. Indira sees something has changed since their childhood and persists in their usual antics of annoying each other until he finally trusts her enough to let her see how broken he feels. Only then do they come to the agreement of being fake dates to Indira’s brother’s wedding- him to be able to feel better when Indira’s around and her to stick it to her ex, who is part of the wedding party.

As I said when reviewing Lizzie Blake’s Best Mistake, Mazey Eddings is so talented at creating stories with flawed and real humans who experience life in sometimes hard ways and sometimes have mental illness but who go through journeys of healing (usually in therapy!!) and life doesn’t end (WOW HOW REVOLUTIONARY but honestly). This story felt like a love letter to people who have been through tough things and also to the power of therapy especially for people in the medical fields. I read almost the entirety of this book in one Saturday morning and I can say that I have not gotten teary as many times as I did that morning reading in a very long time- both happy tears for the stories of Harper, Thu, Lizzie, and Indira that have implanted themselves in my heart and sad and frustrated tears for characters who were hurting and seeking healing. FIVE STARS ALL AROUND!!!!!!!

Thank you to NetGalley, and the author for my early review copy! I absolutely loved this book! I haven't laughed and cried harder at a book in such a long time. I've been in a bit of a reading slump, but I'm so glad I had the privilege to read this. Mazey's writing is authentic and honest. It can be challenging for authors to write about anxiety and mental health where it feels forced, but Mazey incorporated it within her characters with grace and authenticity. I loved Jude and Indira so much. They were two people lost with real problems, and Mazey dug deep into that; she didn't just keep the characters at surface level. Jude has been through the wringer and having him experience what he went through made me ache for him. I felt like I was there with him, and watching him find a sliver of peace and quiet with Indira was so wonderful to see. I didn't want to let go of these characters, and I highly recommend this book to everyone! I've read Mazey's other books, and this is my favorite out of all of them. It was a book I never wanted to finish.

Thank you NetGalley, Mazey Eddings and St. Martin's Press for the ARC of The Plus One. This is my personal review.
I really enjoy a book that is based on fake dating. Every one for me has a little bit of a twist how it goes from fake to real. But this one had way too many other issues thrown in that it was not what I was expecting.
I wanted to enjoy this book but for me it was just an average read.

The Plus One is a roller coaster of emotion. At times, laugh out loud funny, but suffused with moments of deep heartbreak. The quick wit and sassy banter that crackles between Jude and Indira is central to the playful pigtail-pulling energy that can only exist between two people who have known each other their whole lives. A relationship that begins as frenemies grows in to a deep bond that will ultimately become life saving. Mazey Eddings just keeps getting better and better, and I can’t wait for more from this contemporary romance powerhouse. Thank you to @NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for my gifted ARC.

Thank you to NetGalley and St Martins press for this digital arc all opinions are my own.

I’ve fast become a Mazey Eddings fan, she writes strong independent women and always has great mental health rep in her books and The Plus One was no different in either of those regards.

After absolutely loving and devouring Eddings sophomore book, Lizzie Blake’s Best Mistake, I was thrilled to get Indira’s story next.

Well I felt the PTSD representation was stellar, completely well researched and written with perfect tenderness and realism, the romance side of the book just didn’t quite hit me in the feels and I found Indira callow and Jude I didn’t feel like I knew who he was beyond the PTSD.

I loved see the friend group reunited and I had a lot of laughs at the group discussions and antics but a romance should shine brighter than it’s supporting cast.

I do look forward to Thu’s story next as I think she has a lot of sass and wit.