Thursday, January 22, 2015

The Rosie Effect

The Rosie Effect
By Graeme Simsion
Simon & Schuster, 2015. 344 pages. Fiction.

In the sequel to 2013's surprise hit The Rosie Project, geneticist Don Tillman and his new wife, Rosie, are living happily in New York City, with Rosie working on her Master's thesis at Columbia and Don teaching genetics and both of them moonlighting as cocktail-makers extraordinaire. Don applies his usual scientific method to saving his friend Dave's business, helping his neighbor George manage his industrial beer refrigeration unit and, the most important project of all, The Baby Project, which will help Rosie take perfect care of herself and her fetus in her unexpected (to Don) foray into motherhood. But will Don and Rosie's marriage be able to stand up to the problems facing them from all sides?

I really enjoyed Simsion's first book and was looking forward to his sequel until I happened upon a less-than-favorable review of it. So when I finally got it in my hands, I was a little apprehensive. But I found that it had a lot of the same qualities that I loved in the first book. Don's character is hilarious, even more so because he doesn't see why the way he reacts to things is so out of the ordinary or humor inducing. The author was able to remain true to the character he introduced at the beginning of the series while still reflecting the growth that Don was able to make, both in the first book and in the course of the second. My only quibbles with the book were that sometimes the conflict seemed a bit manufactured - if they had both sat down and actually talked for a minute they could have worked things out pretty quickly, I think - and the conclusion wound up pretty fast for the amount of time the conflict carried over. But, overall, I enjoyed every minute of this book.

JH

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