The Rosie Effect - Graeme Simsion

Thank goodness for business travel. A six hour round-trip drive to Southern Illinois where the only successful outcome was my finishing The Rosie Effect. I absolutely loved the first book of this "series", the Rosie Project (you can read that review here). While I wasn't quite as tickled with this sequel, the writing, the humor and the beloved characters are all still there. This time the stakes are a bit higher.

Don and Rosie are living in New York City. Don is a professor at Columbia University and Rosie is finishing her PhD thesis in psychology while also beginning an MD program. When Rosie gets pregnant, hilarity and misunderstanding ensue. However, as Don and Rosie have now been married for ten months, I would have expected the characters to have gotten a bit better in the communication department. However, they let self-doubt get in the way of their relationship and I did actually feel a bit of stress about the characters and what they were going through. 

In the meantime, we meet a few new friends, George, an aging rocker with a string of bad marriages and one really messed up kid; Lydia, a terribly judgmental social worker and some other new minor friends. The biggest disappointment was Rosie herself. In the first book she's likeable and moves Don in new directions. She's not perfect, but you can relate to her. In this book, she's a shell character, a plot point. She's compelling action from Don without any reciprocal understanding. 

I was outraged on Don's behalf that she would become pregnant without telling him, and then judging him on how he reacted, how he prepared, whether he felt "connected" to the baby, and then somehow deciding he wasn't going to be a good father, even though ALL evidence in the book pointed to the contrary. Don is a loyal friend, and a reasoned sensible mentor. He helps Gene's children through issues and into eventual reconciliation with their father. He's constantly doing nice things for people because he is good as solving problems logically. Rosie misses all of this, despite being the only one to see it in the first book. Cheapening out Rosie's character to somehow create dramatic tension wasn't fitting with the characters. 

Definitely not as good as the first, but then, Don is still a great character. Try not to be disappointed.

3/5 Stars