{Release Day Review} The Plus One by Sarah Archer (@SarahArcherM @PutnamBooks)

A hilarious and heartwarming debut novel about a brilliant but socially inept robotics engineer who builds her own wedding date to her sister's wedding, and learns more about love than she ever expected.

Meet Kelly. Twenty-nine, valedictorian, and a brilliant robotics engineer to boot. While her professional life is on the rise, her personal life is struggling to get off the ground.

With her sister's wedding looming and her attempts to find a date becoming increasingly cringe-worthy, Kelly does the only logical thing: she builds her own boyfriend, if only to get her mom off her back about being perpetually single. Kelly planned to pass off her robotic masterpiece, Ethan, as her other half just until the wedding. But then she can't resist keeping him around even after the "I do's."

Ethan is just too perfect--gorgeous, attentive, smart (he does have Google for a brain), all topped off by a mechanical heart endlessly devoted to her. When Kelly is with him, she becomes a more confident, spontaneous version of herself. Plus, for the first time, her mother is actually proud of her.

But as the struggle to keep Ethan's true identity a secret threatens to detonate the career Kelly has worked so hard for, she knows she has to kiss her toy boy goodbye.

There's just one problem: she's falling for him.

Kelly Suttle is a wiz at her job, but she’s atrocious at finding a date for her sister’s wedding.  It doesn’t matter how many men that she encounters, none of them tick all the boxes. So with the date looming ever closer and nonstop interference from her well-meaning mother, she decides to take matters into her own hands

“By your age, I was married with two kids, and a third on the way! Gary was married at twenty-seven. Your sister will be married in less than two months, and she’s only twenty-five. I’m getting worried for you. Who will take care of you when you’re old and alone?” 

“Socialized medicine or the apocalypse, whichever gets there first. I can take care of myself, Mom. For someone who talks about me being twenty-nine like I’m some Bronze Age corpse fished out of a bog, you don’t seem to realize that I’m an adult.” 

“All right, then, who are you bringing to the wedding?” 

“I don’t know! The Jolly Fucking Green Giant!” Kelly threw her left hand up in exasperation. 

“Kelly Suttle. Do you think this is all a joke?” 

“I think it’s a party, not a Navy SEAL operation, and you’re taking it way too seriously.” 

“Oh, so it’s just a party. The biggest day of your sister’s life and my life’s work is just a party.” 

“I didn’t mean—” 

“When I started in the wedding industry here, this was just another middle-class town,” Diane forged on. “Now it’s one of the most expensive zip codes in the country. Everyone expects the moon! Last week a bride demanded that I find her a dress that changed color according to her mood. I’m not Merlin. These people think that I’m a Google and they can just enter their dreams into me and I’ll spit back whatever they want—” 

“I met someone,” Kelly blurted out.

“You met someone?” Diane was utterly confused. “Do you mean on LinkedIn again?” 

“No, a guy. I went out tonight with Priya and met this guy and we really hit it off.” Kelly winced, biting her lip. Palliating her mother might buy her some time. Or she might have just royally screwed herself. 

“You met someone!” Diane’s tone was suddenly full of sunshine. “Who? What’s he like? What’s his name?” 

“His name is—” Kelly drew a panicked blank. She looked wildly around the room. A spotlighted billboard caught her eye through the window—eSan, for all your hardware cleaning needs. 

“Esan. I mean, Ethan. His name is Ethan.” 

“Ethan, Ethan. I like it, it’s a good name. What does he do? Where does he—” 

“I really have to go, Mom, it’s been a long night.” When Kelly got off the phone, she threw her head down tiredly on her desk. If only it were so easy to create a boyfriend out of thin air.

Ethan is Kelly’s dream man brought to life.  He should be.  She designed him.  When she goes out with him, she no longer feels inadequate or awkward. With him, she can let down her guard and just be the brilliant funny girl that she really is.
 
When they are out together, she can’t help but notice how people seem to be happy when he’s around.  And with each passing day, she falls just a little more in love him.
​
But what kind of future can she really hope to have with a robot?

“So why the stars?” she asked him later that night. She would never have imagined this scenario in her quest to invent an engagement story. She saw now that the problem with all the other stories she had told was that they were about Ethan, but they hadn’t come from him.

Ethan shrugged. “It seemed appropriate. When I think of stars, I think of you.”

“Same here,” Kelly said, snuggling back against him as they lounged in bed, still watching the citrus-colored light washing over the ceiling. “You’re the one who showed them all to me.”

​“Oh no.” Ethan stiffened a little, looking as if he was struggling to understand something. “It’s the opposite. Before you, I had never even seen the stars.”

The Plus One isn’t your everyday love story. It’s a search for something so utterly elusive these days – simple human connection.
 
Sarah Archer brilliantly captures the modern dating dilemma in all of its hysterical and brutal glory.  With everything from meddling relatives, trips to Target and adventures in shapewear, she still allows her characters vulnerability shine through.  And it’s Kelly’s feelings of overwhelming loneliness that touched me most of all.
 
I adored how Ethan introduces Kelly to the wonders of the world again. Because of him, she finally learns just how strong she really is. And that’s the best lesson of true love...

About The Author ~

Sarah Archer is a Black List Screenwriting Mini-Lab fellow who has had material produced for Comedy Central and published short stories and poetry in numerous literary magazines. After living in Los Angeles, where she worked in literary management and development on projects including House, Concussion, Roots, and Girls Trip, she currently lives in Brooklyn.

The Plus One is her debut novel.

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Visit With Sarah ~
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