I loved The Rosie Project (the first book in this series.) It was one of my favorite reads last year and one I've mentioned to friends off and on. It was funny and sweet and romantic. When I saw that The Rosie Project was coming out, I jumped at the chance to read an ARC of it from NetGalley. It was a disappointing read for me, mostly because I was expecting something funny, romantic, and sweet. 
 To me the blurb for this story read like a marriage-in-trouble romance. The Rosie Effect is not a romance. It was funny in places, but more sad than sweet. I've read marriage-in-trouble romances before and enjoyed them, because the focus in fixing the marriage and things getting better. For about 90% of this book things just get worse and worse. It's painful to read, even though there are many funny parts. 
 Don's friend Gene is back and I hate him even more than in the last book. There's an evil social worker I couldn't stand and very, very little interaction between Don and Rosie. Seriously, Don and Rosie don't have a whole lot of on page time together. A lot of their problems would have been resolved if they'd been honest with each other or even just talked a bit more. Instead, Don had several people giving him advice that he keep things from Rosie in the name of not adding to her stress level. 
 It was good as fiction, but it sucked as a romance. As just general fiction I'd give it a B, but for romance I give it a D. I'll average those to a C- or 3 stars. Giving this such a low grade is sad, because The Rosie Project was such an incredibly good book.