This Book Might Be About Zinnia, by Brittney Morris

In the present day, Zinnia is working on her admission essay for Harvard but it isn't coming together.  Zinnia's decided to write about being adopted, but it isn't enough and a reader has advised her that it needs something to give it a stronger impact.  Zinnia struggles with what to do until she starts to read the latest book from her favorite author.  In that novel, the protagonist is given up by her mother and has a distinctive heart-shaped birthmark on her forehead.  So does Zinnia.  There are other similarities and Zinnia begins to wonder if the author is also her birth mother.

Eighteen years early, Tuesday was a pregnant teenager who made the agonizing decision to put her baby up for adoption.  During the pregnancy she was largely abandoned by her family and she poured her heart into a journal.  In the aftermath of the adoption, the journal was lost.  In two parallel storylines. the truth about what happened comes to light, impacting far more than Zinnia and her search.

The adoption story is interesting and beautifully told, but there's an awful mess of subplots that distract this story.  Everything from the nature of the author of the novel to Tuesday's family's mysterious connection to the mob.   There's arson at the adoption agency, an accidental drowning, and an implied murder.  Never mind the mess of an ending with an implausible manhunt and a bizarre hallucinatory episode.  The promise of a surprise ending that is never revealed and the introduction of characters in the final pages that play no part in the story left me confused and frustrated.  I want to like this story but it needed an editor with the will to trim this train wreck down!