The Plus One by Sophia Money-Coutts

Read May 2019. Published 9th August 2018.

Polly is fine.
What does it matter if she has just turned thirty and her love life is virtually non-existent?
Her job as an article writer for Posh magazine is not exactly what she envisioned when she decided to be a journalist either - how many articles can you write about the dogs/houses/babies/love lives of the aristocracy before you become as mad as they seem to be?
To top it all, her best friend Lex is getting married to the dubious Hamish, and wants Polly to be her maid of honour (with hideous dress, of course).
Polly may not be looking for "The One" just yet, but she would certainly settle for someone to her "Plus One" for the wedding.

When Polly is sent on an assignment to a huge mansion to interview the handsome Jasper, Marquess of Milton, she finds that he is not quite what she is expecting. Jasper is charming and funny, and does not seem to be the playboy everyone assumes him to be - although his family are, of course, totally bonkers.
Polly tries to remain professional, but it hard to be unmoved when you are being pursued by someone like Jasper, and she finds herself falling for him. Her friends, Lex, Joe and the dependable Bill, are not so keen, but her mum says he has excellent manners!

Is Jasper "The One", the "Plus One", or the wrong one?

I loved this book from start to finish. Imagine a Bridget Jones for the social media age, with a bit of Jilly Cooper and Richard Curtis thrown in for good measure.

Sophia Money-Coutts worked as a journalist for Tatler magazine, so she must have a good knowledge of the weird and wonderful ways of the British aristocracy - wonderfully fancy names and obsessions with dogs and horses seem to abound, from what I can gather from this book. There are some hilarious moments of culture-shock between the worlds of Polly and Jasper - I particularly enjoyed Polly musing about the differences in conversation topics between her own friends and Jasper's.

This is a fine romantic comedy, with laughs, tears, friendship and true love. It is a tale about finding "The One" where you least expect them to be, but realising that you secretly know they were the one for you all along. Gorgeous!
I really hope that this book gets optioned for a film, as I would love to sit down and enjoy the whole thing again by watching it with a big bag of popcorn and a box of tissues for the happy crying at the end.