Recurring themes - Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore

I am drawn to stories that feature bookstores, most likely because it is my secret desire to own one of my own. Not all stories about bookstores are happy, but all of them have an important message within them. My most recent bookstore read is Matthew Sullivan's Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore, which centers around Lydia Smith one of the employees. Lydia we learn is a survivor of a horrific crime one that has changed her and how she relates to the world. To compound to her sorrows, she is the first to discover the body of a customer who has committed suicide in the store. He has left her a clue - a photograph of herself at her tenth birthday party surrounded by her two best friends.

The story continues to unfold as we learn about Lydia's past and how she begins to unravel the unusual suicide notes left behind by Joey. Joey has cleverly paired books that he owns with books still in stock at the store, his books have windows cut out from them which when overlaid the corresponding pages in the store's books reveal a message. Lydia is forced to find the truth about how her past and Joey's are intertwined.  

What through me for a loop (SPOILER ALERT) was that central to this story is the search for a birth parent. This is the second book this month that I've read that featured this theme at its heart (see post on Celine). Of course this may simply be another case of Baader-Meinhof (see post) that I am experiencing. Either way, both of these novels reveal the heartbreak of families when they are separated from one another.