The Rosie Effect by Graeme Simsion
Genre: Contemporary, Adult
Published by: Penguin
Pages: 411
Format: ARC E-Book
Rating: ★★★
Series: The Rosie Project (#1)
Where to Find: Goodreads | Amazon

I finally did it! It feels like I’ve been reading this book for ages and now it’s finally over. Am I relieved? Maybe.

I really did enjoy ‘The Rosie Project’, the first book in this series. It was different, fresh and new (and one of the only new adult books I’ve read so I didn’t have much to compare it too!) But this book…well, it didn’t spend five years in the making.

Things I loved about this book include:
– Don’s consistent personality: just because he got his Rosie happy ending didn’t mean he lost any of the quirkiness he had before Rosie.
– The introduction of George, Dave and Sonia: lovely additional characters, who all helped Don grow as a person in some way.
– The gradual progression of the relationship between Don and Rosie: Data – check. Marriage – check. Pregnant – check.
– Some humorous episodes, like the Plane Incident: sometimes I wonder how Simsion researched these things….

Things I didn’t love about the book:
– How one person’s opinion defined Don’s capability to be a father.
– The distance between Don and Rosie that did not coincide with a year of marriage.
– The web of deceit that was created: it felt kind of like a Shakespeare play, complete with pretending to be someone else!
– Rosie’s inability to accept Don for who he was and actually pay attention to all the effort he was making to improve his chances of being a good father, no matter how many court trials were drawn up against him.

That’s a pretty balanced list! (and definitely something Don would appreciate.) There were a lot of elements within the book that reminded me of ‘The Rosie Project’ and showed great continuity between the characters. I was a little confused, in ‘The Rosie Project’ to how long Don and Rosie were actually together (it turned out to be six months or something!) and a year of marriage on top of that did little to show how much they understood each other.
I guess that’s the problem with loving someone who is so different from you. Sometimes you won’t see eye to eye. I just wish that Don and Rosie were able to reach more of a compromise, rather than doing what Rosie wanted the majority of the time.

I’d recommend this book to people that liked the first (we all know how risky a sequel is!) and to anyone that’s interested in reading about a more adult relationship. Overall, I’d give this book about 3 stars, because the negatives drew a lot from the positives.

(The UK haven’t got a very interesting cover for this series!)