Plus One by Elizabeth Fama

*based on an ARC edition

     I wanted to like this book a lot more than I actually did. Plus One was pretty well written, and the story was engrossing, but I felt that there was a few things missing. The book takes place in an "alternate history" (which I thought was a very interesting concept) in which after the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918, the U.S. government decided that the population would be divided into two different times. Meaning half the people are allowed out during the day, and are colloquially known as Rays; and the other half are only allowed out at night, and are known as Smudges. According to the story, this policy helped stop the spread of disease by reducing the amount of people around at any given time. As society is wont to do, one side treats the others as scum. In this instance it is the Smudges who are downtrodden, poor, and treated like criminals. However, the sides weren't decided by any special criteria, so I was confused as to why that was. 

     Soleil is a Smudge, and her grandfather is dying. Her older brother was recruited into the Day because of his special computer skills, and she hasn't seen him in two years. But he just had a daughter, and Sol wants to make sure her grandfather can hold the baby just once before he's gone. To this end she pulls together an elaborate kidnapping plan that depends on her injuring herself at her Night job so that she will be in the hospital during the Day. She manages to get the baby with the unwitting help of a Medical Apprentice- but it's not the right baby. It turns out to be the baby of the head of the Night Ministry (the government of the Night people). So this is bad. 

     There are important things about Soleil and Ciel (her brother); their parents were terrorists trying to bring down the division of Night and Day, Ciel works with a shady crowd, and there is much more about this baby Sol kidnapped than she knows. She and the Medical Apprentice fall in love, inevitably, and it turns out maybe it was fate that brought them together that day. 

     The thing is that while I actually did enjoy the details, and the story, so much of it was kinda unexplained. For instance, it seems like the Day people all speak French, as does Sol and Ciel (their names mean sun and sky in French, respectively) but there's no reason for that given. There's no explanation, really, for why on Earth Sol thought this kidnapping plan was anything but a horrible idea. The end, for me, is unsatisfactory; had I been Sol it would have worked out a lot differently! It could have done well with an epilogue, as well. 

    Perhaps there will be some reworking by the time the book is released. Overall I did like the book, just not as much as I wished to. I feel like there was a great deal of promise and potential but it ultimately fell a little short.