BookPage Fiction Top Pick, January 2015
We hear plenty of stories about falling in love. What we don’t often get, especially in romantic comedies, is the idea that marriage just might be the beginning of the love story, not its culmination. As The Rosie Effect shows, sometimes it’s possible, and even necessary, to fall in love with your partner over and over again. Sometimes that process can be just as beautiful—and just as romantic.
In The Rosie Project, we met Don. He may or may not be on the autism spectrum, but he certainly relies on logic instead of emotion and is often baffled by his interactions with other people. When he meets brash, break-the-rules Rosie, he discovers a love that defies logic.
We left them at happily ever after. Now we meet them again after a life-changing move to New York and news of a pregnancy. Both Don and Rosie are growing as people, but they’re not really growing together, and Australian author Graeme Simsion portrays that tension beautifully. Just as in a romantic comedy, we find ourselves hoping that two characters will overcome obstacles to find true love—but this time, they’re sitting just across the dinner table from each other.
Many sequels falter, but this one is pitch-perfect. It’s cute, but it isn’t cheesy. It’s extremely funny and clever, but not at the expense of the characters or as an insult to the reader. The unexpected twist in The Rosie Effect is the way Simsion manages to make marriage romantic. This book isn’t really about pregnancy or living with autism or moving to a new city. It’s about having your world rocked when you really, truly have to compromise with another person. It’s about how tricky that is, how hilarious that can be, and how beautiful it is when you pull it off.
This article was originally published in the January 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.
ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Q&A with Simsion for The Rosie Effect.
