One Plus One

May 5, 2014
Bestselling British author Moyes (Me Before You) blends a sobering commentary on the widening gap between haves and have-nots into this quirky tale of lopsided families finding the courage to love. Jess, barely able to make ends meet as a house cleaner after her husband, Marty, walks out, enlists the help of rich client Ed to drive her math-genius daughter Tanzie to a competition. If Tanzie wins, the prize will be enough to pay for her to attend a top-notch school. Along with Jess’s Goth stepson, Nicky, who is Marty’s son, and the slobbering family dog, Norman, the misfits cram into Ed’s car for an alternately hilarious and heartbreaking adventure. With side trips to visit Ed’s dying father and Jess’s now-estranged husband, the travelers learn to reconcile with pasts they can’t change and futures they’re afraid to imagine. “Good things happen to good people,” Jess insists. “You just have to keep faith.” There’s never anything predictable about stubbornly optimistic and protective Jess and her oddball kids, or the distracted Ed and his disjointed work-family relationships. It’s exactly that quality that makes this offbeat journey so satisfying, and Moyes’s irrepressible flaws-and-all characters so memorable. Agent: Sheila Crowley, Curtis Brown.

June 1, 2014
Popular British author Moyes (The Girl You Left Behind, 2013, etc.) offers another warmhearted, off-kilter romance, this one between a financially strapped single mother and a geeky tech millionaire.Ten years ago, Jess Thomas got pregnant and dropped out of high school to marry Marty. Two years ago, hapless Marty temporarily moved out of their home on the southern coast of England to sort out his life. He never returned. Cleaning houses by day and working in a pub at night, Jess barely earns enough to support her 10-year-old daughter, Tanzie, and her 16-year-old stepson, Nicky, whom she's been raising since he was 8. Jess worries constantly about sensitive Nicky, a moody goth regularly beaten up by the local bully. Math genius Tanzie presents a different crisis: She's been offered a generous scholarship to a private school her current teachers say she needs, and Jess can't come up with the balance. The only hope is winning prize money at a math tournament in Scotland, but how to get there? Meanwhile, one of Jess' cleaning clients, computer whiz Ed Nicholls, has come to stay in his seaside vacation home to avoid publicity surrounding insider trading charges. He and Jess share an instant mutual dislike, but when he ends up drunk at the pub, Jess makes sure he gets home safely. Partly out of gratitude, but largely to escape pressure from lawyers, his ex-wife and his sister-who's nagging him to attend his father's birthday party-Ed offers to drive Jess, her kids and their large dog to Scotland. A road-trip-from-hell romantic comedy ensues, complete with carsickness, bad meals and missed signals. Unsurprisingly, hostility evolves into mutual attraction. But Moyes throws in a few wrenches, like Tanzie's failure at the competition, Ed's father's cancer and the cash Jess has secretly kept since it fell out of Ed's pocket at the pub that first night.Moyes has mastered the art of likable, not terribly memorable, but far from simple-minded storytelling.

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Starred review from May 1, 2014

Jess Thomas works hard to support her ten-year-old, math-genius daughter and bullied teenage stepson, but it never seems to be enough. With two part-time jobs and no child support from her estranged husband, Jess is desperate to change her fortune. Ed Nicholls suddenly finds his world crashing down as he comes under investigation for insider trading. Facing the loss of his business, his oldest friend, and likely his freedom, he flees to his vacation home in the south of England. Jess discovers just how far she will go for the sake of her family when an opportunity to send her daughter to an elite school presents itself, even if that means a road trip to Scotland with the kids, their enormous dog, and a near stranger, Ed. Without fail, everything goes wrong. But in the end, this amazing novel is about more than a road trip; it is about trust, dignity, desperation, and, ultimately, love. VERDICT Moyes (The Girl You Left Behind) has a remarkable gift for creating balanced, deep characters who struggle to find their own way. With humor, and insight, and an amazing ability to see how personal hitting rock bottom can become, she has written an emotional, rich, and satisfying novel. Highly recommended. [Eight-city tour.]--Jennifer Beach, Cumberland Cty. P.L., VA

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 15, 2014
One Plus One equals one fine novel. With its ensemble cast of skillfully crafted charactersfrom single-mom Jess Thomas to tortured goth teen Nicky and gifted sister Tanzie to Ed Nicholls, technology millionaireeach person's story flows on its own, yet they all meld together into an uncommonly good story about family, trust, and love. Best-selling Moyes (The Girl You Left Behind, 2013) gets things rolling as this hysterically mismatched m'langealong with Norman, a slobbering 80-pound dog of indeterminate breedembarks on a road trip from the English shore to Aberdeen, Scotland, so that Tanzie can compete in a maths Olympiad. Her ability to enroll in a prestigious school rides on whether she can win the competition's cash prize. She's certainly earned the best education; her family just can't afford it. In a riotous twist and momentary lapse of good sense, Ed volunteers his top-of-the-range Audi, complete with his services as driver. There are high jinks galore as perhaps one-too-many gastrointestinal problems arise, but, in all, the trip, with what Ed perceives as its terrifying boundarylessness, delivers on its promise, just not in the way anyone anticipated. Bravo to Moyes for delivering toothsome characters in a story readers will truly care about. Is that Hollywood calling?(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)