Wealth! Influencers! Destination wedding! Murders!

The Plus One 
by S.C. Lalli 

Toronto: HarperCollins Canada, 2024 
$25.99 / 9781443467049

Reviewed by Candace Fertile

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Shay Kapoor gets invited to a destination wedding to be the plus one of a good-looking and rich white guy named Caleb, who is the best man. The bride and groom, Radhika Singh and Raj Joshi, are also extremely wealthy. Shay isn’t rich, and the Blush Resort & Spa Los Cabos is a paean to excess and bad behaviour on the part of the clientele; but its luxury is appealing, especially to someone like Shay who isn’t used to such a place and who would never be able to afford it. 

As Shay says, “I’m only here because of Caleb. He’s the best man in this week’s production, and I—to quote the bride—am the ‘gold-digging whore’ who snagged him.” The Joshi group, run by Raj’s billionaire father, pays the tab for everyone. Thorstein Veblen’s term “conspicuous consumption” immediately comes to mind. In The Plus One Vancouver writer S.C. Lalli (Are You Sara?) is clearly making fun of the ultra-wealthy and their extravagance while also jabbing at how fortunes are accumulated. 

The luxury fades almost immediately as the bodies of Raj and Radhika are discovered the morning of the wedding. They’ve been shot in Raj’s bed. Wedding guests are sent home or asked not to arrive, but Shay stays to try to support Caleb in his grief over the death of his best friend. But she has another motive, and it turns out that almost all the key players have secrets, some more devastating than others. Because the resort has such incredible security, it’s likely that the victims let the murderer into their villa or it’s one of the people who could enter it: Caleb, who works for the Joshi Group as did Raj; Zara, Radhika’s older sister, a famous and wealthy entrepreneur who sells anti-aging face cream; Sean Joshi, Raj’s cousin, also employed in the family business; and Daniela, the Mexican event planner, who works tirelessly at her job and then at trying to help Shay solve the mystery. 

Lalli gets the plot off to a snappy start, and the hundreds of pages that follow include many twists. The story varies between Shay as a first-person narrator and a third person narrator, and flashbacks reveal how Shay meets Caleb three months before the wedding. Besides trying to help Caleb, who is really quite a pathetic figure and thus provides some welcome schadenfreude, Shay wants to find out who committed the murder. In part she doesn’t want to think that she’s been sleeping with someone capable of killing his best friend and his fiancée. But her opinion of him is conflicted: “He’s a manbaby in one breath, a fuckboy in the next, and a beat later, he’s charming his way into your heart.” 

The novel is up to the minute with contemporary references. Radhika is an influencer, a job description that always makes me think of pretty women plastered with makeup, shilling junk and offering dubious advice. Radhika is more than that, but as Shay has known these people only three months, she assumes Radhika is all surface and no depth. Zara is beautiful and successful, but she is thoroughly unlikeable and is driven by greed. The novel includes emails and texts. Guests are asked not to share photos or videos on social media until they are approved because it’s the wedding of an influencer who has a team of consultants. 

Actually, all the characters are a challenge, and their idea of friendship seems driven more by drugs and alcohol than real feelings. Lalli, through Shay, tries to redeem the characters by showing their complexity, but that doesn’t quite work. The mystery is complicated by various theories about cartels, international conspiracies, and an underlying desire on the part of Shay, Sean, and Radhika to do some good, but that comes across as forced, especially as Radhika is dead. Sean is a victim, who seems to become a victimizer rather abruptly. Shay’s own behaviour is dubious, as is her willingness to make use of friends when she needs them. 

But as a summer read, this book is fun and easy. The core mystery is well-plotted, and the complications are amusing. I didn’t quite buy the idea of some characters’ motivations being social justice, as I’m not sure the ends justify the means, but The Plus One offers a lively look at what that can do—and how the desire for it might result in murder. That’s a standard incentive—and a believable one.

*

Candace Fertile has a PhD in English literature from the University of Alberta. She teaches English at Camosun College in Victoria, writes book reviews for several Canadian publications, and is on the editorial board of Room Magazine. [Editor’s note: Candace Fertile has reviewed books by Rebecca Godfrey with Leslie Jamison, Ian and Will Ferguson, Shashi Bhat, Carleigh Baker, Kathryn Mockler, Lucia Frangione, Darcy Friesen Hossack, Robin Yeatman, Emi Sasagawa, Patti Flather, Peter Chapman, Janie Chang, Pauline Holdstock, Ava Bellows, Beth Kope, Geoff Inverarity, and Angélique Lalonde for BCR.]

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The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors, 2023-25: Trevor Marc Hughes (nonfiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction and poetry)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an online book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, Maria Tippett, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

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