About the book, Someone Else’s Love Story

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks; Reprint edition (August 5, 2014)

For single mom Shandi Pierce, life is a juggling act. She’s finishing college, raising precocious three-year-old Natty, and keeping the peace between her eternally warring, long-divorced parents.Then she gets caught in the middle of a stickup at a gas station and falls instantly in love with William Ashe, when he steps between the armed robber and her son.

Shandi doesn’t know that William’s act wasn’t about bravery. When he looked down the barrel of the robber’s gun he believed it was destiny: it’s been exactly one year since a tragic act of physics shattered his universe. But William doesn’t define destiny the way other people do—to him destiny is about choice.

Now William and Shandi are about to meet their so-called destinies head-on, making choices that will reveal unexpected truths about love, life, and the world they think they know.

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About the author, Joshilyn Jackson

Joshilyn Jackson is the New York Times bestselling author of six novels, including Gods in Alabama and A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty. She lives in Decatur, Georgia, with her husband and their two children.

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My Thoughts

Joshilyn Jackson’s books are always stories I look forward to reading. Her work is the perfect compliment to a cup of mint tea or glass of wine, a tub full of bubbles and a long, relaxing soak. This book, Someone Else’s Love Story is no exception.

From the first page, the story is compelling. We meet Shandi, her mother, her young son Natty, and her childhood friend Walcott. In any other novel Walcott would be the gay best friend, but Jackson defies convention…he’s absolutely straight.

A bit later, we meet William, intelligent, athletic, ex-military William, who has his own tragic backstory. Then we see Shandi and William thrown together in the worst possible scenario: a convenience story robbery, and we think this book is about them.

Well, it is, and it isn’t, and to say more would spoil the story, so here’s what you need to know: in Jackson’s character’s words you can hear ever nuance of the South, you can smell the magnolia blossoms, taste the fried chicken, and you know exactly how much twang every character has in his or her voice. The women are especially vivid, but Jackson’s male characters are always dimensional as well.

One of Jackson’s other flair’s though, is that she finds parts of southern culture no one expects. This book looks at what it’s like to be the only (part) Jewish person in a sleepy Southern town, and how it feels to be the son of two lesbians in the same small-town culture. It also examines themes like motherhood, the mother-daughter relationship, and the difference between comfortable friends and the comfort of a lover.

Taken as a whole, Someone Else’s Love Story should be on everyone’s must-read list, because it’s a fast read with a deceptively deep meaning.

Goes well with chicken salad and iced sweet tea, followed by peach cobbler.

This review is part of a blog tour sponsored by TLC Book Tours. For more information, and the complete list of tour stops click HERE.