RaveThe San Francisco ChronicleIt\'s refreshing, then, to see something like a new American dream appear in Anya Ulinich\'s first novel, Petropolis. Here, it\'s no longer a matter of material success, or even educational opportunities, but about finding a place for one\'s misfit heart ... Sasha is a lonely, pudgy girl -- an ugly duckling born to a swan of a mother. This near-but-not-quite acquiescence to cliche runs throughout the book but, luckily, Ulinich has a wry sense of the absurd that usually turns the commonplace on its head ... Ulinich has a keen literary sensibility that brings forth the pathos of her heroine\'s quest without indulging in bathos ... Easy sentimentality is also thankfully avoided ... The absurdity of these preconceptions, and the freedom to escape from them, is what shapes Ulinich\'s narrative and what forms its great optimism.
B. A. Paris
PositiveAustCrimeParis knows how to keep us in the seat and our eyes glued to the page. Bring Me Back sets its own pace of creeping suspicion, denial, a good re-think, then circling back to rampant suspicion ... A small cast, a small setting, few choices in suspects as to the who and why narrows your focus and this will rachet up the tension for the reader who will pile it onto every character encountered ... Bring Me Back is a fast and enjoyable beach read ... Definitely a one trick pony though.
