I'm a sucker for covers. It's the first thing I notice about a book, and I get excited when I see a great cover. The picture and the font contribute heavily to my decision to purchase a book. So when I first saw Allison Winn Scotch's cover for her debut novel The Department of Lost and Found, my interest was piqued. There are two covers for this novel; one a blonde girl with her hair tied loosely in a ribbon, the photograph captured from behind so her face is not revealed, the other showed only the upper torso of a bundled up person, her gloved hands clutching a soft red leather case. I got the latter copy. After reading this, I look forward to purchasing her second novel Time of My Life.

Natalie Miller's life seems pretty good. Well her career is excellent, the love life is just okay, but her passion is her work so it doesn't bother her terribly that something is lacking with her boyfriend. As the top aide to a female senator in New York, she's got her life in politics all mapped out.Then one night, her boyfriend falls into her and notices a lump in her breast. Her doctor tells her that her cancer is in stage two and puts her in the rounds for chemo immediately. The Senator insists on Natalie taking a break and focusing on her health, but she just can't separate herself from her work. Meanwhile, her boyfriend has decided that now is the time to tell her he's been seeing someone else in Chicago and that they're over.

As Natalie's world as she knows it crumbles, she decides to contact all of her exes to see why it didn't work out with any of them. In doing this, she begins to see herself in a new light, a not altogether flattering one. Her ambition has cost her a lot, but has it been worth it? Somewhere along the line her devotion to politics and changing the world for the better morphed into a passion for winning at whatever cost.

As Natalie contacts her exes, from high school to present day, she works up the nerve to call the love of her life, the one that left three years ago. But her mother beats her to it, and soon Jake is back in her life, promising to be there for her through all of the chemo and getting better. The only problem is that he's a successful musician and can't give up touring.

Though Natalie was unlikeable initially, I did find myself starting to sympathize and ultimately root for her as she grappled with her notions of who she was, and who the people around her were as she fought the cancer. The book was a page turner but it wasn't one I couldn't put down. I actually liked the book better after reading the interview with the author who said that she wrote the book after a friend of hers died fighting breast cancer, and though Natalie wasn't similar to her friend in anything but her fight against the cancer, I got a little misty eyed that her friend inspired her to write about such a topic.