The Rosie project / Graeme Simsion

"I'm madly in love with this book! Trust me, you will be too" - Lisa Genova, author of Still Alice.

This is a very charming book. It's funny, touching and a lighthearted look at what would otherwise be a serious topic. Don Tillman is a university professor who has characteristics of autism that complicate his interactions with people. The book opens on his attempts to find a suitable mate (The Wife Project), for which he devises a questionnaire of 16 double sided pages for potential partners to fill out. But things don't go according to his carefully laid and rigid plans, and there is an unexpected turn when Rosie Jarman, a spiky-haired, boot-wearing bartender, suddenly enters the picture.

This book has been selected by Goodreads as one of their choices for best fiction for 2013. There are several categories of "best" titles and people can vote for the "best of the best" on their site - link is below.

Booklist Review: "Genetics professor Don Tillman's ordered, predictable life is thrown into chaos when love enters the equation in this immensely enjoyable novel. Never good with social cues, Don explains his difficulty empathizing with others, which he forthrightly says is a defining symptom of the autism spectrum, as a result of his brain simply being wired differently. Diagnosis is not the issue here, as the reader is rooting for Don as he searches for ways to fit in. With his fortieth birthday approaching, he designs a questionnaire to find a compatible female life partner using his overriding devotion to logic. But he finds his quest competing with the request of a woman to discover the identity of her biological father. The protagonist is passingly similar to that of Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003), but Simsion's first novel is not as dark, focusing instead on the humor and significance of what makes us human. Don is used to causing amusement or consternation in others, but as his self-awareness and understanding grow, so do his efforts to behave more appropriately. Determined and unintentionally sweet, Don embarks on an optimistic and redemptive journey. Funny, touching, and hard to put down, The Rosie Project is certain to entertain even as readers delve into deep themes. For a book about a logic-based quest for love, it has a lot of heart."

Here is a link that might be useful: Goodreads best of 2013