"When you realise you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible."

#CBR12 Bingo: White Whale (on my TBR list since early 2014) (Would also work for Cannonballer Says, Debut, or Red or Yellow – depending on what edition of the novel you are reading)

Don Tillman lives his life on a fairly rigid schedule. He eats the same things every week, he has set aside a certain amount of time for work, exercise, cleaning his flat and so forth, and any deviations that force him to change the schedule makes him annoyed. He doesn’t socialise much, except for the occasional dinner with his best (and pretty much only) friend Gene and his wife Claudia. The few times he has been on dates, it has tended to be disastrous because the woman always turns out to drink too much, or smoke, or show up late or have some other absolutely unforgivable flaw. Yet Don would like a wife, as he is rather lonely. He creates a multi-page, detailed questionnaire, created specifically to rule out all the women with which he will clearly be incompatible. Gene helps him process the many responses he gets and promises to send some of the promising candidates that pass, to meet him.

When Rosie Jarman shows up at Don’s office, he is baffled. Rosie quite clearly fits none of the criteria Don looks for in a life partner. She’s messy. She smokes. She doesn’t exercise regularly. She clearly enjoys way more alcohol than is advisable. Yet assuming that Gene sent her as one of the women who had “passed” the questionnaire, Don invites her to dinner at a fancy restaurant, but it has to be moved to his flat, as he refuses to wear the jacket stated in the restaurant dress code, has a physical altercation with one of the bouncers and they are forced to leave. Rosie seems to think it’s all very amusing.

Despite Rosie not fitting any of Don’s carefully selected criteria, he had a wonderful evening with her and can’t stop thinking about her. Then he discovers that Gene sent her to talk to him about a genetics question (he’s a DNA expert), not at all because she might be a suitable life mate for him. She is frankly appalled when she hears about the Wife Project survey, and wonders how any woman would be willing to complete such a thing. She is, however, looking for her biological father, and Don has the knowledge and tools available to help her. He’s not even sure why he decides to offer to help her find her father, but it allows him to spend much more time in her company. As the search continues, and Rosie and Don keep having strange and wonderful adventures, trying to collect the necessary DNA samples they need, Don is forced to consider whether the scientific method might not always be the correct way to approach life.

Full review here.