The Plus-One List - Amy Ewing

Eloise, who struggles with anxiety, strongly prefers the company of her senior rescue dogs to people. But when her best friend announces she’s getting married in Mexico City and every guest must have a date, the pressure is on. Using an exclusive “plus-one list,” Eloise winds up with Agustín, a charming journalist and immigrant who recently moved to New York City from Mexico.

Agustín is on a mission to write the article of his career, but to do that, he’ll need to snag an interview with a man who’s proven impossible to track down. His only chance is to catch the source unaware at the upcoming “wedding of the century.” At first, being Eloise’s plus-one seems like the perfect solution, a purely transactional arrangement. Eloise is not looking for romance, and Agustín sees no need to tell her about his true motives for coming to the wedding.

As they play tourists in Agustín’s hometown, sampling smoky cocktails and delicious street food and meeting his family, Eloise slowly comes out of her shell. Suddenly, her blossoming trust in Agustín starts to grow into something deeper. But if Agustín wants to keep that trust, he’ll need to come clean—before their fragile connection is broken forever.

Blurb taken from Goodreads.

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I was provided with an advance copy of this book by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

I remember reading The Jewel by Amy Ewing way back when, so I was interested to see what a rom-com from the author might look like. As with most romance books I pick up, the premise sounded just unique enough to make for a cute story, so I went in with my hopes high. 

Sadly, I didn't love it. It was easy to read and I liked the way the characters meet - that unique premise sets up the characters meeting in a fun way. Yet the further I got into the story, the more I struggled with the main character. Eloise overcomes a lot of personal challenges throughout the story, which I always love to see, but she also struck me as pretty selfish, and once I felt it, I really struggled to root for her. 

Rating: ✫✫

My Thoughts

Let's start with the idea, because that was the selling point for me to want to pick this book up. My husband read the blurb and commented how unrealistic it was. As a regular romance reader, I quickly highlighted that this was far from unrealistic across the genre, and also was designed to be, primarily, fun, and interesting. I really enjoyed how this played out, and how our characters initially meet. 

From the point where the characters meet, that's where it all went a bit downhill for me. 

I think it all hangs on the point that I did not really believe that Agustin fell for Eloise as quickly as he did. The article he was writing explained why he was so keen to pursue the connection, but it seemed that we switched very quickly from that motive, to his being completely in love with her. It felt insincere, to the point where if it was revealed that he had been playing up his love for his own gain, I would have believed it readily. I was ready for him to become the villain of the piece, because it would have felt more believable to me! 

The biggest challenge I faced, however, was that I did not like Eloise at all. On the positive side, Eloise's character normalised how an anxiety disorder can manifest in real-life situations. On the negative, I genuinely felt this was used as a tool to enable her to be a selfish person. Maybe it's because I just got married, but I found Eloise's dismissal and disinterest (at points, open resentment) of her friend's happiness to be very distasteful. We spend the story reading about Eloise actively rooting against her friend, expressing frustration that she is being forced to be happy for her, only for her to eventually have the revelation that her friend deserves to be happy and that she should be happy for her. If you've just realised that so far into the friendship, you, my friend, are way too self-involved. 

Rachel, by comparison, was an absolute saint in the way she supported Eloise, and was better than she deserved. If there's a sequel about Rachel, that's the one I want to read!