Jessica Z.
Klomparens's novel about 28-year-old San Francisco career girl Jessica Zorich dips into the familiar worlds—corporate, dating, sex, family, art—found in many coming-of-age stories, and ups the ante with a few jolts of terrorism. Jessica is professionally and romantically lost: she has a faux-lationship with her upstairs neighbor Patrick, and a job as a copy writer that doesn't quite do it for her. So after a terrorist attack hits San Francisco and Patrick reveals he has a girlfriend, Jessica revamps her life and cozies up with Josh, a lithographer mysterious in every way except his good looks. The relationship develops fast, and while Jessica becomes the subject of his latest art project, terrorists strike again and Patrick is relegated to the past until another bomb goes off. The story moves swiftly, even if Jessica tends to micromanage the narrative. It's an unexpected move to drop suicide bombers into what is basically chick lit, but Klomparens's gamble mostly pays off.(June)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.