I enjoyed Mazey Eddings’ first two novels, but this one…blew me away! So sweet, so steamy, and I laughed so loud I had to put it away during my son’s piano lesson. I loved the teasing relationship between Jude and Indira and the mental health rep was so authentic.

I'm a sucker for fake dating trope, and enemies to lovers just happens to be my favorite. So when you combine the two, it equals magic! This was a good read! Loved the banter.

4/5 ⭐

Mazey eddings has become one of my favourite authors and I really love her writing style. And I’m quite glad that this too didn’t disappoint. I loved these two MCs so much but I found **that little spoilery** aspect to be quite unnecessary. Despite that I loved how these MCs get to have their perfect HEA

I am always a sucker for Mazey Eddings. She does incredible mental health representation, and this is no exception. Jude is such a wonderfully written character with such complex emotions, it’s impossible to not love him. Indira is head-strong and fumbling with her own emotions as well. Their individual journeys and their journey together are so well done and balanced. I looked forward to this book and I’m thrilled it lived up to the hype.

Things I loved about this book:

✅ Real life characters that are relatable with mental health issues

✅ Fake dating

✅ Great banter

✅ Enemies to lovers

✅ brother’s best friend


Didn’t love:

❌ The cheating (this is usually an automatic DNF for me but I pushed through)

❌ Really long chapters

❌ Epilogue that didn’t seem to serve much of a purpose

This was a good book but felt long in a few places.

This is my second book by Mazey Eddings and I continue being a huge fan of her storytelling. I enjoyed this one quite a lot!

She does a wonderful job fleshing out characters, developing romance, and making a story feel real.

I thoroughly adored Indira and Jude, individually and together. Their chemistry was crackling with excellent tension and hilarious banter from start to end. Jude was an especially layered character, with Eddings taking great care in writing about his ptsd. That said, Indira at times felt like a flat character as her character seemed there more to serve Jude's character in his growth rather than finding any notable growth of her own. Nevertheless, I loved Indira. She is charismatic, endearing, brazen, and so intuitive. She was easy to root for, but her character journey felt stagnant at times.

And unfortunately, so did the final act of the book. There was no conflict nor tension in the romance facet of the book-- and this is a romance so I was expecting some sort of great obstacle, even of the cliche variety, but instead the final act serves as even more introspection and inner conflict for Jude. With Indira coming in as support rather than main character status.

The Plus One didn't reach the same level of excitement as Lizzie Blake's Best Mistake for me, but it's still an absolutely worthwhile read I'd gladly place on my shelf.

Very cute, loved the characters. The book moved a little slow in my opinion, but was entertaining enough that I think our patrons at the library would enjoy it and this genre is very popular right now.

I read all three books of this series and I really, truly enjoyed all of them but something about Indira really made me love her as a person. She is fiery, fiercely independent and also really loves her family.

Indira is surprised when she finds herself without somewhere to live and ends up staying with her brother who is about to get married. She has no idea but her childhood enemy Jude is staying there too and in town for a bit for the wedding.

Indira and Jude are a very true friends to lovers trope and I had so much fun, and a few tears, while reading it.

I can't wait to see what is next from Mazey, and she is an auto buy author for me.

Thank you St. Martins and Netgalley for this arc!

I enjoyed reading this story, it was well written and sweet. I loved the storyline and the way the characters were written. It was fantastic and the way she represents mental health in her books is why I loved reading it. A sweet comedy story that will have you smiling and enjoying the journey.

Mazey Eddings keeps delivering the most heartfelt, amazing books. It feels like she's become more and more comfortable with diving deep into mental health stories, and then she's brought us Jude.
While her first two books focused on the FMC, this book is definitely Jude's story. Indira is a great character, with whom I shared so much and to whom I could relate like few other romance characters, but the main protagonist here is Jude and his journey with PTSD.
While the book starts with a hate-to-love kind of relationship, it quickly evolves into a relationship of camaraderie and care. Indira and Jude are so attuned to each other, it is incredible to see their love grow.
I cannot wait to see Mazey's next books because I'm 100% sure she'll only get better.

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.

I was really excited to read The Plus One. I enjoyed A Brush with Love and Lizzie Blake’s Best Mistake and greatly looked forward to reading the final book in the series.

While I’ll start by saying this one wasn’t my favorite of the three, I truly enjoyed it. It’s a quick read that will keep the reader engaged throughout. I liked that both Indira and Jude were flawed in relatable ways. In this story, Indira and Jude are reunited after not seeing one another for years. They grew up together, bickering and arguing along the way. They are brought back together in this story for her brother Collin’s wedding, who is Jude’s best friend from childhood. Jude is back from practicing medicine abroad and Indira is staying with her brother due to an expected breakup. It’s easy to see how these “enemies” turn into lovers. Staying under the same roof, fake dating to deal with being around Indira’s cheating ex, palpable chemistry, and the development of very real feelings make this HEA feel well deserved.

I liked that Indira is a phycologist with very relatable pain. It’s nice to see her wrestle through learning she can really help people while also overcoming her need for perfection in herself. It’s also really nice to see Jude as an accomplished surgeon who learns to acknowledge and accept his PTSD from practicing medicine in high conflict areas. I don’t mind seeing and feeling a character’s pain – that’s part of why we read – but I personally hate the “walking in on the boyfriend/ husband cheating” part of any story. It almost makes me want to close the book and stop reading every time it happens in a book, so I personally didn’t enjoy how often Indira’s ex cheating on her was referenced throughout the story.

I love anything that this author writes! The characters were fantastic and so was the storyline! I can't wait to read the next book.

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press, Net Galley, and the author herself for this advanced copy.

There are very few authors that I will rush to read their book and simultaneously know it’s going to leave me in tears each time, making it beyond deserving of a 5 star rating.

Mazey Eddings’s “A Brush With Love” series has been one of the best and most enjoyable series I’ve had the privilege of reading. The raw emotion, real experiences, spurts of love and laughter all create one of the most incredible reading experiences. I’ve read 150 books this year and all 3 of Eddings’s books I’ve read this year are easily at the top of that list.

“The Plus One” proved to be another beautiful example of how amazing of an author Mazey is. She did an absolutely wonderful job of capturing the pain, the love, the spice, the joy and everything in between. I found myself not only rooting for their relationship, bur rooting for their friendship from the beginning. It was so clear that these two needed each other to be a shoulder to lean and cry on, and I’m overjoyed they found love with each other.

It was also wonderful to see glimpses of other characters from “A Brush With Love” and “Lizzie Blake’s Best Mistake” in this book, and its so bittersweet that their stories have come to an end. If there was a fictional world I could go into and a friend group to be part of it, it would so easily be this one.

Thank you again for this early copy of “The Plus one,” I am so grateful to have enjoyed this book when I did!

Thank you St. Martins Press for this ARC copy of The Plus One - pub date April 2023

When Indira walks in on her bf making out with another girl, she moves in with her brother and his best friend, Jude, who is also her childhood nemesis. Jude has taken a leave from his job doing medical work in third world countries and is struggling with PTSD. Can these two offer one another the help they didn’t know they needed??

I gotta be honest - This rom com was meh for me. I will say that the banter between Indira and Jude was great, as well as the side characters and their humor. But that’s really where it ended for me. It felt like the relationship went from 0-100 in three pages, and then it was just ooey gooey cheesy love talk for the rest of the book. There was never a fight-and-make-up moment, so from the time they got together (~65%) to the end of the book, all the tension and conflict was gone. The author replaced said tension with spice, which felt excessive to me. I had to skip a lot of pages to get to actual plot, which is partly why I finished this book so fast. The author did handle mental health really well and I appreciated that. But overall, it started strong and didn’t deliver. I did give this three stars for those who enjoy romcoms and just need a quick and enjoyable read.

Such great tropes and topics throughout the story. This has childhood enemies to lovers, fake dating, brother's best friend while touching on serious issues like PTSD and anxiety. I like how the story still featured the romantic comedic aspect, but didn't belittle the things Indira and Jude had to deal with. I feel like it made the story more relatable because no one is perfect, but the way the characters dealt with their inner battles could be inspiring for readers. I have not read the other two books in this series, but still enjoyed the side characters and their interactions with to Indira and Jude. I did feel towards the middle like the story was moving at a slower pace than I would like so I did experience a bit of a slump, but once I got over that the resolution was something I was satisfied with.

Indira and Jude go through a lot of mental health emotions in this story and I like how the author handles the reality of those issues and addresses the triggers in the beginning. However, it takes a long time to get the full backstory and I lost interest a number of times. I did like their bantering and enemies to lovers storyline. I haven't read the other stories in the series and I probably won't, but this wasn't a terrible book it had funny and good moments just seemed a bit long.

I haven’t read any other books by Mazey Eddings, including the others in this series, but my experience reading The Plus One encouraged me to seek out more in the future. The connection between Indira and Jude was fun and charming, but there’s also a lot of depth and difficulty to this book that makes for a richer reading experience than you always get from a romance. Jude’s journey through PTSD was honest and thoughtful, which I appreciated. On a personal level, I absolutely loved the mention of Moulin Rouge as a source of a sexual awakening for Indira as it’s one of my very favorite movies and doesn’t get talked about enough. An enjoyable read from start to finish.

I was pleasantly surprised by this book! I read Mazey's first book upon publication and really enjoyed it. I then was so kindly given an ARC of her second and did not jive with it at all, so I wasn't sure what to expect with this one. I am glad I didn't let my dislike of the second book in the series deter me from reading more Mazey Eddings!

One thing I would note is that in the first two books, I got a sort-of mean girl vibe from Indira. I didn't see that at all in The Plus One. I'm not sure if I didn't understand her character correctly in the beginning of the series, or if her personality suddenly changed when she became a main character.

Overall, I genuinely enjoyed reading Jude and Indira's love story. The new side characters (and appearances by former main couples!) brought life to the story as well.

This is an all-around delight. The banter is top notch. The fake-dating trope is delicious as hell (add in friends to lovers AND only one… tent). A pitch-perfect example of mental health conversations. And steamier than a humid kitchen.

Like, get out of town. This was so good.

Indira and Jude just have the most fun relationship. They’re comfortable with each other from growing up together, but don’t drag their feet over getting to know each other as adults.

The way Indira deals with Jude’s PTSD is also just so lovely; she doesn’t push him. She’s just there for him. Paired with her commitment to her own mental health, this book is just the real deal.