[This ARC was provided to me for the cost of zero of your monies by the publisher. NetGalley was involved. Aren't they always?]

I wasn't the greatest fan of Grameme Simsion's first novel, The Rosie Project. It took too long to get going and - particularly in the early sections - bore the scars of its original iteration as a script, but not in a good way. However, it did get better and I did enjoy it so I was very pleased to be granted a review copy of its sequel. I was even more pleased once I'd read it.

The Rosie Effect picks up the story some months after end of the previous book - while it's probably better to read that one first so you know the characters, this is perfectly understandable if you don't. Don and Rosie are now married and living in America where Don works at Columbia and Rosie is attempting to balance finishing her PhD with her medical studies. Oh, and becoming a mother. Which was slightly less planned than Don is easily able to cope with.

Although The Rosie Effect is a comedy, and a chucklesome one, I found much of it absolutely heart-wrenching. Initially it trades on the well-worn path of the first book, Don's (probable) Aspergers providing the comedy and the tension and while unfortunately veering extremely close to uncomfortable territory in the early sections. Don is given an unnecessarily Pooterish aspect which sits staggeringly poorly against the rest of the book, especially when both books attitude to Don's (possible) Aspergers is taken into account. He has not been given that diagnosis and this has always read like a deliberate (and positive) choice by the author.

Things settle down though, Don becoming his character rather than an emotional-slapstick caricature. His introspection and lack of empathy suit the first person narration perfectly. Even when you can see the set pieces coming they're massively enjoyable, forwarding the plot in ways which manage to be both ludicrous and worrying realistic.

So, why the "heart-wrenching" then? Because underneath everything else, The Rosie Effect does what David Nicholls' Us was trying to do but better. Don may be very different from your usual character but his is the universal experience. He is going to be a parent and he is scared. His efforts to cope with the situation and to do the best and right things are normal, and it's Simsion's plotting skill which takes them and pushes them further without become stupid. Yes, you can see where Don is going to go wrong as soon as he has certain ideas, but you can't always see where he's going to go right. He doesn't know what he's doing but he's trying; he wants to do well and it tugs on my heart.

The Rosie Effect is a great book. It's an unshowy, solid read with wide commercial appeal but non of the dumbing down that phrase usually indicates. It's left me wanting to go back and re-read the first, and I'm feeling pretty sure it'll be one of those books I enjoy more the second time around. For this one though: 4 stars.

this is the second book i'm currently reading, which has been described as " hilarious"  by various readers and reviewers. the New York Times calls it "divinely funny" on the front cover, and Redbook promises me on the back that I'll "laugh my pants off." sadly, i have not found it divinely funny, and my pants (for the most part) remain firmly attached to my body.

but, here's the thing: i'm still liking it. a lot. i think i'd like it more if i hadn't been led to believe this was going to be a laugh-riot when it's really -- as yet another reviewer more accurately described it -- a "dramedy." because what we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is a woman on the verge of a nervous break-down. or, maybe even in the middle of one. the first quarter of this novel is a "blue jasmine" breakdown of a upper class mother told from the perspective of her precocious daughter. it's been kinda funny in places, in a cringe-worthy sort of way.

and really, some of this is my own fault. i'd heard that the author was a writer on "arrested development" ( ! ), and made some unfair assumptions about what i'd find here  -- mainly that it would be absolutely hilarious and awesome. while it hasn't yet been all that hilarious, i reserve judgment on the "awesome" bit. it's early yet, and now that i've revised my expectations, Bernadette and i should get along just fine.

<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5954947-he-walked-around-the-horses" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="He Walked Around the Horses" border="0" src="https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1328308293m/5954947.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5954947-he-walked-around-the-horses">He Walked Around the Horses</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/128647.H_Beam_Piper">H. Beam Piper</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/908539149">3 of 5 stars</a><br /><br />
Rating: 3.5* of five<br><br><strong>The Publisher Says</strong>: In November 1809, an Englishman named Benjamin Bathurst vanished, inexplicably and utterly. He was en route to Hamburg from Vienna, where he had been serving as his government's envoy to the court of what Napoleon had left of the Austrian Empire. At an inn in Perleburg. in Prussia, while examining a change of horses for his coach, he casually stepped out of sight of his secretary and his valet. He was not seen to leave the inn yard. He was not seen again, ever. At least, not in this continuum...<br><br><strong>My Review</strong>: A fun introduction to Piper's large series of stories about the Martian colonization of Earth. He posits that Homo sapiens is, in fact, the remnant of an ancient Martian exodus from a used-up and cooling planet. Since, in 1948, the mere notion of sequencing the human genome wasn't so much as a glimmer in Science's eye yet, this would fly...but of course that day is done, what with the discoveries of just how interconnected we humans are with all life on Earth, and how very, very much less complex our own genome is compared with that of the average plant.<br><br>But in 1948 the notion that we, an order of magnitude more sophisticated than our vanished and presumed to have done so without a trace relatives the Neanderthals, were alien colonists and they were the inferior Terrestrial attempt to match us, would have appeal. It was the year that George Wallace the elder ran for president on a racist "State's Rights" ticket, and the year that *shudder* Strom Thurmond was first returned to the Senate. Notably, all the people in the Paratime stories are white. Hmmm.<br><br>This story is told from the multiple points of view of the befuddled local-time-line officials who have to deal with a seemingly mad yet clearly genuine British diplomat bearing the most outrageously, insanely off-kilter credentials and spouting arrant nonsense with evident sincerity and admirable consistency and aplomb. It's a clear case of "not on MY desk" as Bathurst (whose local timeline self is away in the Crown Colony of Georgia) is passed higher and higher up the food chain. No matter how high he gets, the incumbent bureaucrat wants the terrifying responsibility for deciding what to do with the poor man to reside higher still.<br><br>In the end, poor Bathurst is confronted by Prussian madness doctors (chilling thought, isn't it?) with clear evidence...local newspapers...that his world is a delusion. Psychic crisis much? The ending is, in and of itself, a bit unfair; but as the story sequence moves on, it's clear in hindsight what actually occurred. <br><br>Flawed considered in itself, in the Paratime context, with its explicit laws about protecting the Paratime Secret of interdimensional travel, the story sets up a fun and often funny set of romps through all the possibilities of human history.<br><br><a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/deed.en_US" rel="nofollow">
<img alt="Creative Commons License" src="https://p.gr-assets.com/540x540/fit/hostedimages/1380148217/680962.png" class="escapedImg"></a><br>This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/deed.en_US" rel="nofollow">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License</a>.
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/3920693-richard-reviles-censorship-always-in-all-ways">View all my reviews</a>

The pause button on Accent Press's delightful series The Chronicles of St Mary's is engaged after A SECOND CHANCE

http://tinyurl.com/lah7gg5

My four-star book warbling tells you why you should read them all. And BTW, BookLikers, who here knows someone in the development department of the BBC? Or ITV? This is a TV series waiting to happen.

Read my happy warbles of pleasure at my blog: http://tinyurl.com/lntl92j

I am so picking your pocket of $3.99 here, US Kindle users. The UK version's cost I don't know, but if it's more than two pounds I'd be amazed.

Good fun, some sex, a fair number of lasciviously inclined redheaded women, and dodos. You can not go wrong.