Books Like The Rosie Project

Romance by questionnaire and other plans for falling in love.

Don Tillman writes a questionnaire to find a wife. Rosie Jarman fails it, then brings him a problem a genetics professor can get to work on. She wants to find her biological father. Don tells the story himself, so you get to hear his reasoning even when you can see a date going wrong before he does.

For another dating scheme, go straight to Seven Exes. If you mostly miss hearing what goes on in Don’s head during a perfectly ordinary conversation, start with Standard Deviation.

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01
Cold Comfort Farm
by Stella Gibbons
Flora Poste moves in with relatives whose favorite subjects seem to be guilt and family secrets. She has Don’s faith that things can be put in order, and she’s prepared to start with everyone else’s life. This is the pick for rural melodrama played for laughs, right down to the farm’s own word for Seth’s sexual pursuits, mollocking.
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02
Standard Deviation
by Katherine Heiny
When Audra stops to encourage a cashier who once had an upsetting run-in over expensive pears, her husband Graham listens and wonders what he could cook with the pears. She also thinks they should make friends with his first wife. If you liked knowing where Don’s mind went while other people talked, Graham is good company in the checkout line.
Give this one time if you like quiet marriage comedies. The story moves through errands and conversations, with marital doubt and infidelity in the background and their son’s origami club on the calendar.
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03
Lucky Jim
by Kingsley Amis
Jim Dixon teaches medieval history and needs the approval of people he can barely stand. His private commentary has a meaner streak than Don’s, and the courtship shares space with a send-up of postwar English university life. Amis makes an ordeal out of Jim trying to open his eyes with a hangover. The university also expects him to give a public lecture.
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04
The Bookish Life of Nina Hill
by Abbi Waxman
Nina has her week arranged around a bookstore job, trivia night, and some peace and quiet. Then she learns she has a whole family living nearby, and her trivia rival is getting harder to ignore. Her way of sizing people up would make sense to Don. A man who knows sports trivia, she figures, probably doesn’t read.
This is a warm bookshop comedy with an anxious heroine. The family story starts with the death of a father Nina never knew.
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05
The Love Hypothesis
by Ali Hazelwood
Olive Smith kisses a professor in a lab hallway, then tries to deny she did it. Adam goes along with the fake relationship that follows because looking settled at Stanford might help him get his research funding back. If you want another romance with a practical reason for two scientists to keep seeing each other, go here.
This one’s steamier. Olive is a graduate student and Adam is a professor, and the book includes workplace sexual harassment by another character.
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06
Seven Exes
by Lucy Vine
Here’s the closest match for the questionnaire. Esther finds an old magazine article that says everyone dates the same seven types of person. She recognizes her exes and gets back in touch to see if she already let the right one go. The book takes you back to the breakups as Esther starts revising her version of events. The friends who encouraged the whole thing have to live with how much of her time it takes up.
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07
The Bromance Book Club
by Lyssa Kay Adams
Gavin Scott’s friends think a Regency romance might help him save his marriage. They have a secret book club for exactly this sort of thing. Go here for another man who thinks love can be studied, with a marriage on the line and frank talk about sex.
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08
The Husbands
by Holly Gramazio
Every time Lauren’s husband goes up into the attic, another man comes down. He brings a different version of her life with him, so rejecting him can change her job and friends along with her marriage. It’s the wildcard, a book about trying on entire marriages in the time Don would spend screening a date. One of Lauren’s husbands disqualifies himself with toe shoes.
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09
The Sideways Life of Denny Voss
by Holly Kennedy
Denny Voss makes his plans sound reasonable even when they involve kidnapping a goose. He’s giving his account to a court-appointed therapist after being charged with murder. Try this for a narrator who tells you exactly how things made sense to him at the time. There’s gun violence and more sadness here than in Don’s romance.
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10
The Do-Over
by Lynn Painter
Emilie puts her first declaration of love in her planner, then has to live through the same disastrous Valentine’s Day again. This is the high school pick, with a lab partner she keeps running into and time to try a few different approaches.
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