Fans of chick lit will recognize familiar elements here -- the romantic (yet distant! yet rich!) romantic interest, the funny and smart heroine -- but what gets this book reviewed here is that the plot centers on Sarah's search for her biological mother.

Sarah is a sort of half-adoptee. Her father is her bio dad but what happened to her first mom is at the crux of the novel. Author Newman says she was inspired by a friends' search and there are details that ring especially true. Sarah's fascination with Nancy Drew, for example, and her discomfort with infants. Also the death of Sarah's parents seem to have freed her for the search, which is certainly something she would have in common with many adoptees.

Sarah doesn't have to dig too hard for her information, aided as she is by at least one sympathetic adoptee, but she struggles enough that readers unfamiliar with closed records will be surprised by the hoops a searcher needs to go through to get her own information.

I felt the topic (searching adoptee) didn't do well under such a light treatment but I appreciated Newman's unwillingness to succumb to stereotypes or to push the happy ending demanded by the genre too far.