Book review: This chick-lit adoption story will warm your heart

Grace refuses to accept reality. She thinks she can get him back, that their relationship can be salvaged, she’s willing to humiliate herself repeatedly in pursuit of this delusion. Marc is already making plans to live with another woman who he knew before he ever met Grace.

This other woman, Emily, was Marc’s first great love, and she could not be more different than Grace. Emily is gorgeous, she’s been a backup singer for Celine Dion, she’s everything Grace isn’t, and she now has Grace’s guy. Anna is willing to do just about anything to try to derail her estranged husband’s current plans.

Anna has a business as a seamstress, she designs and creates clothing for women. Early on she meets a client, Mary Anne, who wants her to design a wedding dress. Her client is grossly overweight and has an unusual request, she asks Grace to make the dress while Mary Anne goes on a crash diet, then, as the pounds come off, Grace will need to keep making alterations.

That’s one theme: the things women in our culture will do to their bodies to try to be more attractive. There’s lots of humor here, one hilarious scene occurs as Grace undergoes a hot wax treatment. As she endures this agony the woman doing this to her is utterly dispassionate and mechanical.

There’s constant tension throughout the story because Marc insists on bringing his mistress Emily into Grace’s life and now Emily won’t go away, she keeps showing up at Grace’s house. She wants to be friends. You can picture the steam coming out of Grace’s ears, she wants nothing to do with Emily.

Emily has a teen-aged son who begins hanging out with Grace’s teen-aged daughter. More friction, what are these young people up to? There’s the theme of racism; like the author, Grace’s origins were as an adopted child from Korea. The author’s mirrored sense of otherness resonates throughout this story.

There’s romance too. A guy is clearly enamored with Grace-she is so wrapped up with her impossible dream of fixing their marriage she fails to notice. Of course Jinja’s readers realize these things. In Grace the author has created a sympathetic character who can veer from tragic to comic with the flutter of a page.