Through the Bookstore Window

January 8, 2018
San Francisco bookstore manager Gina Perini, the heroine of this tangled tale set in 2011 from Petrocelli (The Circle of Thirteen), escaped from war-torn Bosnia in 1996, but her past still haunts her. In particular, she wants to know the fate of Jelena, a missing Bosnian baby. Thanks to the research of a lawyer friend, Gina discovers that Jelena, now 15-year-old Alexi Wilder, is living in Indianapolis, Ind., with her foster parents, Allen and Susan Wilder. Gina makes an impulsive trip to Indianapolis, where she meets Susan and sees Alexi but doesn’t introduce herself. Back in San Francisco, she emails Alexi, who responds with a plea that prompts her to return to Indianapolis to rescue the girl from her abusive father. Gina takes Alexi home to San Francisco, where she explains their surprising relationship. Unbeknownst to the other, Susan and Allen each hire someone to track down Gina and Alexi, setting the stage for a violent showdown. Petrocelli overplays coincidences in a convulsive conclusion that wraps things up too neatly. Nonetheless, he provides some important lessons about love and survival.

January 15, 2018
A war refugee tries to reunite with her missing daughter, who may be in danger.Years after escaping from the war in Bosnia, a bookstore manager named Gina Perini lives above her shop in San Francisco, trying to stay out of sight and out of trouble. But one day a lawyer friend says she may have found Gina's long-lost daughter. The daughter, once Jelena and now Alexi, is living in Indiana with her adoptive parents. Her father is a fundamentalist minister who shepherds a large flock at a megachurch and manages a foundation that works with orphaned children around the world. Why would a man with so many responsibilities want to adopt a helpless, pretty refugee? Anyone who's familiar with the genre will already have a good guess. From there, one melodramatic twist follows another right up to the bloody denouement in a motel parking lot. Melodrama works best with a sense of humor (just ask Charles Dickens!). Petrocelli's (The Circle of Thirteen, 2015) second novel, on the other hand, is grimly serious. That's understandable given his weighty themes--war and memory, incest and gender identity--but if Gina is going to draw a parallel between her own story and the rich history of noir stories set in San Francisco ("I couldn't help thinking that I was about to play a part in one of them"), it should be as much fun as a noir, too.Melodramatic but unengaging.

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