The Plus One (A Brush With Love #3) by Mazey Eddings

Welcome to Smitten For Fiction! My name is Amanda and this blog is all about books. I mainly share spoiler-free book reviews and sometimes other bookish things. Not every book is my cup of tea – and that’s ok. Even if I didn’t like it, I try to find readers that would. Thanks for visiting. Let’s get Smitten For Fiction.

I was excited to get a Netgalley ARC of The Plus One after giving the first two books of the series four stars.

“Mazey Eddings’s writing is authentic, emotional, and intensely romantic! To me, it’s like a Taylor Swift song in book form.” – New York Times bestselling author Ali Hazelwood

“This is a must-read for fans of Eddings, filled with moments of comedic relief and steamy, intimate scenes.” ―Library Journal

About The Book 📚

Title: The Plus One (A Brush With Love #3)

Author: Mazey Eddings

Publication Date: April 4, 2023

Publisher: St. Martin’s Press/St. Martin’s Griffin

Suggested Reader Age: R (Restricted) Contains profanity, sex, alcohol, and nudity.

Genre: Contemporary Romance, Mental Health (PTSD)

Pages: 320

Content Warnings: Mental illness (PTSD), panic attacks, medical trauma, sexual content, infidelity, grief, cursing, alcohol

Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741

Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-273-8255

Talk Suicide Canada 1.833.456.4566

Kids Help Phone: Call 1-800-668-6868 (toll-free) or text CONNECT to 686868. Available 24 hours a day to anyone in Canada aged 5 to 29 who wants confidential and anonymous care from trained responders.

For Indigenous People

Hope for Wellness 24/7 Help Line: Call 1-855-242-3310

About The Author

“Mazey Eddings is a neurodiverse author, dentist, and (most importantly) stage mom to her cats, Yaya and Zadie. She can most often be found reading romance novels under her weighted blanket and asking her fiánce to bring her snacks. She’s made it her personal mission in life to destigmatize mental health issues and write love stories for every brain. With roots in Ohio and Philadelphia, she now calls North Carolina home.”

https://mazeyeddings-com.webnode.page/

My Review

› Indira is a psychiatrist and her brother Collin is a doctor. He’s getting married to Jeremy (also a doctor) in five weeks. Indira is frustrated because the men in her life keep leaving. Her father left their family and started a new family, barely paying any attention to Indira or Collin. She badly wants to give her heart to a man who will stay. She is heartbroken when she walks in on her boyfriend, Chris, cheating with a woman they know.

After catching Chris cheating Indira goes to her brother’s house thinking she’ll crash there. The only problem is her childhood nemesis (and Collin’s best friend) Jude is also staying at Collin’s house until the wedding. He is a doctor and was working overseas helping to treat victims of war. He was given an extended leave after working for three years straight. Jude has PTSD from his work and is not talking to a professional about it. He suffers many terrifying panic attacks throughout the story.

Indira and Jude make a pact to help each other. She’ll help him through his panic attacks while at the pre-wedding events and wedding, while Jude will pretend they are dating to make her ex jealous. I think you can guess where this leads.

› I rate reviews based on my own little tweak of the CAWPILE method to rate books.
0-3 Really bad
4-6 Mediocre
7-9 Really good
10 Outstanding

› Characters: 9
The Plus One has strong character development and a diverse cast. The main characters have goals, strengths, flaws, conflicts, backstories, and characteristics. It was nice seeing characters from the other books. Some other reviewers found Indira annoying, and yes she has a strong personality, but I found her relatable. She reminded me of the female psychiatrist on that Apple TV show “Shrinking”. I love some of her sayings. For example, she doesn’t like to “yuck anyone’s yum”.

› Atmosphere: 6
I felt all the appropriate emotions. I like the balance between sadness and happiness, however, I wanted more description and world-building.

› Writing Style: 7
I hope the repetition was fixed before publication.

› Plot: 5
There’s not much of a plot and the pacing is off. The pre-wedding events felt rushed. There is a 300-page buildup to the wedding and then we spend barely any time at the wedding. There is a lot of “fluff”: words that aren’t moving the plot forward.

› Intrigue: 4
I didn’t feel invested and didn’t feel the urge to pick this up.

› Logic: 4
I can’t explain it because it’s a spoiler but there’s something a character does that just did not make sense to me at all.

› Enjoyment: 5
The Plus One made me laugh and cry.

Average

1.1-2.2 = ★
2.3-4.5 = ★★
4.6-6.9 = ★★★
7-8.9 = ★★★★
9-10 = ★★★★★

My Rating 5.7 ★★★

A Brush With Love ★★★★
Lizzie Blake’s Best Mistake ★★★★
The Plus One ★★★

› Final Thoughts
• The Plus One by Mazey Eddings is an emotional, funny, sexy, character-driven novel about hope, mental health, friendship, and love. Although this was my least favourite of the series, I will continue reading everything Eddings publishes. I’m looking forward to her YA book coming out in August called Tilly in Technicolor.