The Plus One List

by Amy Ewing

5 out of 5 stars

I interviewed Amy Ewing a couple of years ago for my blog and YouTube after I reviewed an early copy of her debut adult contemporary romance, The Irish Goodbye.

Amy is exactly who you hope an author will be when you love their work. She was so easy to converse with, and was so down to earth and genuinely kind. The Irish Goodbye is one of my all-time favorite contemporary romance novels. I recommend that book allll the time. So when The Plus One List was announced, I was not calm about getting my hands on it. I was so excited and grateful when I got the NetGalley approval email.

I read at least 70% of The Plus One List in one sitting. Our FMC, Eloise, has anxiety. So severe, that it shapes every part of her world. Because of the limitations from her diagnosis, she has built a life that mostly works for staying regulated: her apartment, her senior rescue dogs (The Pack), and her best friend Rachel. And then Rachel gets engaged to the son of a wealthy Mexico City family and names Eloise her MOH. The groom's family is superstitious, and so every wedding guest needs a date. Hence: the plus-one list. Enter: Agustín.

Agustín is a journalist who moved from Mexico to New York and has his own reason for getting to this wedding that has nothing to do with Eloise. He needs to interview someone who will be there… a source that could get his piece about his grandfather published in the New Yorker. He doesn’t share this with Eloise, and so we begin our journey of Agustín helping Eloise prepare for the wedding, travel, overall stress of the event, and MOH speech.

This is a dual POV and it really works for our characters. Agustín's chapters are warm and optimistic in a way that perfectly complements Eloise's anxiety-brain narration. The contrast makes both voices feel more specific and real.

What Amy does so well in this book, is write anxiety in a realistic way. Eloise's anxiety does not dissolve just because a cute guy shows up. She does not get cured. She makes small steps, and she panics anyway sometimes, and the book never uses her anxiety as a plot device that gets magically resolved. I appreciated that. And then there is The Pack, the senior rescue dogs, each one with a personality and a history, and the neighbors on the ninth floor who become a found family. I cared about so many people in this book by the end.

Five stars. If you loved The Irish Goodbye, get this immediately. If you haven't read The Irish Goodbye, get both.

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