Everything's Coming Up Rosie, by Courtney Walsh
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Release Year: 2025
My Rating: 2.75 stars
"Sometimes what you think you want and what you actually want turn out to be different things ... Rosie Waterman has one to become a working actor. But lately, that hasn't been working out. When she loses her apartment and her job on the same day, she does what she always does–puts herself out there, ready to find the next big thing. But a trip home makes her realize that while she's been struggling to make this dream come true, all her friends have become real adults with careers and weddings and babies on the way. Rosie's been at this for years, and she has nothing to show for it. But how does she simply let go of her dream? When she's offered a job as the director of a regional theatre's production of Cinderella, she jumps at the chance–even though she's only directed in college and the job is in Door County, Wisconsin, and not in New York. She has no other offers, and at least she'll be getting paid to do something theatrical. But when she arrives, she quickly realizes that the 'regional theatre' is actually in a retirement community, and the 'actors' are actually senior citizens with no acting experience whatsoever. Working on the show presents new challenges, forcing Rosie to learn how to step up and be the leader this fledgling theatre troupe needs. The more time she spends with her new cast, the more she begins to rethink what it means to dream big, especially when that big dream hasn't turned out to be at all what she thought it would be. It's not at all what she expected, but could it be exactly what she needs?"
(From Goodreads)
★★
This book wasn't bad, I just failed to connect with it. At all.
I have a lot of thoughts, so let's tackle this with a good ol' pro/con list.
Pros:
- Clean, no spice romance.
- Good story concept.
- Dylan. I liked Dylan.
- There's a ladder on the cover! Which means I can cross the prompt "something you might use for a home improvement project" off my 2026 Cover Lovers Reading Challenge!
Cons:
- Rosie was annoying. And once I started being annoyed by her, I couldn't stop. Some characters are lovable for their quirky ways. Rosie's quirks, in my opinion, did not make her lovable. I almost died of secondhand embarrassment from reading this book.
- Booker had no personality. I don't even know what else to say about him. He was hot, and that's it.
- Rosie's three best friends felt interchangeable. The book told us their personality differences but didn't really show us, leaving them all feeling kind of flat and, as my husband would say, "corn syrupy" (i.e. overly sweet).
- Arthur's "bristly" to "gooey-centered" ratios were off. (The terms in quotes are pulled directly from the book, by the way.) Which is a shame, because he could have been such a good character. In my opinion, however, he got too gooey towards Rosie too quickly and way too often to make the bristly/gooey-centered dichotomy very meaningful.
- The theme was veeeeery heavy-handed.
- The pacing was off. The first two-thirds of the book were about Rosie and Booker's relationship, while the actual musical that Rosie was there to direct in the first place was crammed into the last third, with a very late (and kind of halfhearted) third act breakup and the denouement of Rosie and Booker's relationship thrown in in the last three pages.
- Way too much armchair therapy.
To anyone who loves this book, I offer my sincere apologies. It just wasn't for me.
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