The Rosie Effect is the sequel to The Rosie Project, which I previously reviewed here. When the action picks up, it's about a year later, Don and Rosie are married and living in New York where he's working at Columbia and she's simultaneously working on her PhD and MD. Then Rosie announces she's pregnant.
This book was lots of fun, with Don's unique approach to research and problem solving resulting in the loss of both of their side jobs, an arrest as a suspected pedophile, and more. I also still love the way that Graeme Simsion conveys more to the reader than Don actually understands about the other characters. However, there were a couple of things that bothered me. First of all, I personally don't care for plots that hinge on one character thinking it's a better idea to assemble a massive conspiracy than to just tell somebody something, and it seems even more unlikely than usual when the person doing so is horrible at lying outright. That's probably as much of a personal pet peeve as anything but it did mean one plot thread annoyed me quite a bit.
Secondly, it seemed to me that Rosie was just as much at fault as Don for the difficulties between them in this book, but that the weight was put entirely on his proving himself as a potential father to her and she wasn't ever really called on her behavior. She seems to set him up to fail extremely early on, really just after telling him that she's pregnant when he was under the impression they weren't planning on doing that yet. (Even he figures out that her failure to take her pill was deliberate.) She goes straight to assuming that she will effectively be raising the baby by herself and doesn't want either to accept his help during the pregnancy or to give him the opportunity to learn parenting skills. She probably has a point that he shouldn't dictate her diet but she should at least accept the evidence that he's trying to help as a sign that he could be a good, supportive father. Furthermore, she actually interprets the fact that he does research and buys the best stroller he can find as his not being interested in the baby, only the stroller. And when he tries to tell her about things that he's doing to learn about babies (aside from the bits he can't mention to her because of plot reasons) she doesn't recognize his intentions at all and says she doesn't want to hear about it. He just can't catch a break.
Those flaws aside, the book as a whole was still a great ride.
Overall: B+
The Rosie Effect will be available December 30.