Wish I Were Here by Melissa Wiesner (The Second Chance Year) is a fun, open-hearted romantic comedy about a precise mathematician whose world is turned upside down due to a case of missing identity.
Catherine Lipton of Pittsburgh, Pa., is thrilled when she's offered a university professorship. However, when the college is verifying her paperwork, the single, 29-year-old learns she doesn't exist. Her birth certificate and Social Security information don't appear in any government databases. This forces Catherine to find a way to substantiate her existence.
Catherine seeks the help of her free-spirited, bohemian father, who has spent years pursuing his dreams of performing as a clown (juggling is his specialty). He raised her alone after Catherine's mother left them when Catherine was very young, and now refuses to help Catherine search for the woman who might retain the documents Catherine needs for her dream job. Desperate, Catherine accepts help from Luca Morelli, the handsome, tattooed, artsy doorman at her apartment building, which is filled with jovial octogenarians. The somewhat sinister connections offered by Luca and those in his orbit draw Catherine into unexpected complications while offering readers amusingly plotted twists and turns.
Female protagonists whose lives comedically derail and force them to change are hallmarks of Wiesner's cleverly inventive rom-coms. In Wish I Were Here, she builds on this foundation with great charm and wit. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines