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Book Review of The Rosie Project (Rosie, Bk 1)

The Rosie Project (Rosie, Bk 1)
Minehava avatar reviewed on + 832 more book reviews


I read about 50 percent of the book and asked myself if I should bear it to the end. No, I couldn't. I skipped few pages, hoping it would get better. I skipped few more, and then few more... to the last few pages and was surprise, surprise NOT confused with what was going on. I read enough snippets to know it was the same plot as before. No twist, no surprise, no redeeming ending to the unlikable characters, the mediocre writing, and to the story that has no story.

This book was supposed to be crazy comedy, an easy, relax read romance, about a man looking for the perfect wife. It starts out that way, but ends up with him and a woman named Rosie looking for her biological father. Don, rules her out as a potential wife but agrees to help her. Don and Rosie are both flat/boring characters. Everything they say is textbook stuff "put me to sleep". Hearing about Don`s ridiculous schedule is suppose to be funny, but was just overkill for me. His best friend the whoremonger professor? Also an exaggeration. No-one lives like this. Not even Proffesors. I know Im married to one. Faculty people are crazy bunch, I agree. I met my share of crazy during my interaction with University staff, including the special brand of crazy in the Anthropology department, that actually uses a mediator during the faculty meetings. But these characters are a pure fantasy land.

Rosie and Don collecting DNA from all the candidates was not interesting. Though I understand that this was suppose to be the pretense for which they "find" each other but it just didn't feel natural to me. It is a questionable from moral point of view, and highly illegal without consent. And quite expensive to do as well. Neither point is an issue ever touched upon, in the story. Which is a problem for me.

Conclusion: I actually think this happy-end romance and Dons "shy-eccentricity =>read hidden Narcissism" would have been better played out in a movie. Which is where this book might be going. The story target audience is the dysfunctional millennials and the younger generations, that find it difficult to date/marry because of their unrealistic high expectations of the "other" without consideration of what is their own "marketability" thinking them selves a perfect examples of humanity. With no defects or some so minor, hardly worth seeing. Narcissism and self worship is the new religion that prevents ANY relationships, including friendship. Don is a Narcissist that overcomes his condition. Which, as will any psychiatrist will tell you, is an impossibility, despite what this make-believe Hollywood ending makes you think. But you can always dream in this book, and the like...