Wednesday, November 19, 2014

One Plus One

One Plus One
by Joyo Moyes

Genre: Fiction

Synopsis: One single mother.  Suppose your life sucks.  A lot.  Your husband has done a vanishing act.  You're trying to keep your family afloat, with two jobs and two children.  You've always been an optimist, but it isn't easy.  That's Jess Thomas's life in a nutshell, and it's about to get a whole lot more complicated.

One chaotic family.  Jess's oddball teenage stepson is being bullied, and her math-whiz daughter has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that they can't afford to pay for.  Jess has spent her life Doing the Right Thing.  But what if, just this once, she did something that was definitely The Wrong Thing-something that might make all the difference for her family?

One quirky stranger-and a comic road trip.  Ed Nicholls is a brilliant tech millionaire whose life is falling apart when he happens upon Jess and her family stranded on the side of the road.  She's stunned to realize that her knight in shining armor is Geeky Ed-a man she considers obnoxious in the extreme.  But in perhaps his first unselfish act ever, he agrees to drive them-plus their pungent dog, Norman-to the Maths Olympiad and a prize that could change things for Jess's family forever....

One irresistible love story.  In One Plus One, opposites attract, and two fiercely independent people learn that love can be found in the unlikeliest places.
From the book jacket

Becky's Review:  I was quite excited when I picked up the latest book by Jojo Moyes since I absolutely loved the first book I read by her-Me Before You.  Sadly, this book did not live up to my expectations.  The storyline was just not captivating or interesting enough.  I found myself bored while reading it and I actually stopped reading it for a while and read another book in between.  I felt compelled to finish the book but after 150 pages or so I questioned why I didn't abandon the book.  I got tired of their ride up to Scotland to the Math Olympiad.  Nothing really happened in the car except for us being reminded that Ed Nicholls had money and Jess and her family had very little money and had to pinch pennies as much as possible.  There just wasn't any action in this story, it was all about character relationships.  I liked the quirky characters in the book and I did want to see Jess get some help and have something go right in her life.

Marcie's Review:  I was quite excited when I picked up the latest book by Jojo Moyes since I absolutely loved the first book I read by her-Me Before You.  Sadly, this book did not live up to my expectations.  As Becky said, it definitely got boring in the middle, and I couldn't figure out why it took them SO LONG to drive from England to Scotland.  It seemed like it was just a plot device thrown in there only to make the characters spend more time together, and it just didn't work for me. I liked the relationships between the characters in the book, but they seemed to develop too quickly (in book time) and yet way way too slowly in the reader's time.  Not my favorite Moyes novel.

Becky's Rating: 2.5 stars

Marcie' Rating: 3 stars

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