Book Review: "The Plus One" by Sarah Archer

Kelly is a robotics engineer. She's smart and ready to go places with her career, but her interpersonal skills aren't always the strongest. She winds up making a mess out of her encounters with people, even when she doesn't mean to. Even her best friend Priya thinks she's socially awkward, even though she knows Kelly means well.

"It would be so much simpler if everyone could just do what she did and suppress their emotions, stuffing them in the back of the closet, right next to the childhood traumas and the performing-in-your-third-grade-play-naked-and-then-all-your-teeth-fall-out dreams."

The problem is, Kelly's younger sister is getting married, and their mother, a wedding consultant who owns a bridal shop, is in absolute heaven as she plans and controls every aspect of the wedding. This includes ensuring Kelly has a suitable date, which is an issue of concern for her mother, because Kelly's dating history is, well, shaky.

Kelly doesn't quite understand all of the craziness surrounding her finding a wedding date. She isn't all that interested in dating anyway. But when a night of clubbing with Priya ends unsuccessfully (although she met a handsome man who introduced her to his boyfriend) and the latest blind date her mother arranged ends in disaster, Kelly decides to take matters into her own hands—literally.

Using her engineering skills and the myriad different parts in the robotics lab, Kelly builds herself a wedding date. Ethan is incredibly handsome, courteous, caring, and he grows more intelligent with each interaction. He is utterly devoted to Kelly and, strangely, she feels more comfortable around him, too. Ethan charms those around him, including Kelly's mother, and no one suspects that he isn't human.

Even though the plan is to disconnect him after her sister's wedding, Kelly realizes she enjoys being with someone and having someone care about her, even if he isn't real. As her relationship with Ethan starts to interfere with her relationships and her job, she knows she has to follow her original plan. But she doesn't count on her mother's continued pressure, and she's utterly unprepared for how she's falling for Ethan. How can she simply take him apart when she cares about him so much?

I thought this was an absolutely charming, silly, sweet book. So many of us have felt the pressures Kelly did, and although we might not have the intelligence or skills to engineer the same solution she did, I definitely identified with a lot of the emotions she felt. Sure, I had to suspend my disbelief, and I kept expecting everything to blow up, but I really enjoyed the way Sarah Archer laid this story out.

Have you ever read a book or watched a movie where you knew everything was going to go awry and you were worried about what might happen but at the same time you couldn't look away? That's exactly how I felt reading The Plus One. It almost felt like I was reading with my hands half over my eyes!

This book brought a new, fun twist to the rom-com genre and I really enjoyed it. If you can embrace the fun side of the book without delving too deeply into what's possible, you'll definitely enjoy it, too.