Saturday, March 21, 2015

The Rosie Effect by Graeme Simsion

Book Summary
The highly anticipated sequel to the New York Times bestselling novel The Rosie Project, starring the same extraordinary couple now living in New York and unexpectedly expecting their first child. Get ready to fall in love all over again.
Don Tillman and Rosie Jarman are back. The Wife Project is complete, and Don and Rosie are happily married and living in New York. But they're about to face a new challenge because surprise! Rosie is pregnant. 
Don sets about learning the protocols of becoming a father, but his unusual research style gets him into trouble with the law. Fortunately his best friend Gene is on hand to offer advice: he's left Claudia and moved in with Don and Rosie. 
As Don tries to schedule time for pregnancy research, getting Gene and Claudia to reconcile, servicing the industrial refrigeration unit that occupies half his apartment, helping Dave the Baseball Fan save his business, and staying on the right side of Lydia the social worker, he almost misses the biggest problem of all: he might lose Rosie when she needs him the most. 

Flo's Review
I absolutely loved The Rosie Project. It was so adorable. But it felt complete to me. I was happy with the place where I left Don and Rosie and did not necessarily feel like their story warranted a continuation. But in this second book, we pick up right where the first one left off. I really enjoyed seeing Don change and adapt to his new world in New York with Rosie. He has several friends and there is no shortage of activities for him.

But I didn't like Rosie in this book. I know she's pregnant and going through a lot, but I felt she basically shut Don out without giving him an explanation. I mean, we all know that if Don knew exactly what the problem was, he would have found a way to resolve it -- because that's how Don rolls. But instead she just lied to him and yelled at him for being himself and didn't tell him anything. So the majority of this book is Don trying to solve what he thinks is the problem. I also was not a fan of the Lydia story line. I didn't like Lydia and couldn't Don's decided course of action have serious ramifications?

We did learn something about Gene that completely changes your view on his character. I like the arc his story took, and even the conclusion. I also enjoyed the addition of George and his story. And I'm on the fence with how I feel about the whole Lesbian Mother's Project, but admittedly these scenes had me chuckling quite a bit.

I'm not sure if the story continues, but I wouldn't mind if it did. It would be fun to see Don's solutions to common parenting problems and how exactly a child is going to fit into their lives.

Thanks so much to Simon & Schuster for providing me a copy for review.

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