Someone Else's Love Story: A Novel

by Joshilyn Jackson Narrated by Joshilyn Jackson

Overview

I fell in love with William Ashe at gunpoint, in a Circle K

For single mom Shandi Pierce, life is a juggling act. She's finishing college; raising her delightful three-year-old genius son, Nathan, aka Natty Bumppo; and keeping the peace between her eternally warring, long-divorced Christian mother and Jewish father. She's got enough to deal with before she gets caught in the middle of a stickup in a gas station mini-mart and falls in love with a great wall of a man named William Ashe, who steps between the armed robber and her son to shield the child from danger.

Shandi doesn't know that her blond god has his own baggage. When he looked down the barrel of the gun in the gas station 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. A brilliant geneticist who believes in science and numbers, destiny to him 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.

Someone Else's Love Story is Joshilyn Jackson's funny, charming, and poignant novel about science and miracles, secrets and truths, faith and forgiveness; about falling in love and learning that things aren't always what they seem-or what we hope they will be. It's a story about discovering what we want and ultimately finding what we need.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

10/07/2013
Friendships and relationships are tested by tragedy in this witty and insightful sixth novel from the author of Gods in Alabama and A Grown-up Kind of Pretty. Single mother Shandi Pierce is paralyzed with fear when she and her young son Natty are caught in the crossfire of a convenience store stickup gone bad. That is, until the dashing William Ashe steps between Natty and the gunman. Smitten by her erstwhile savior, Shandi buddies up to William, hoping their friendship can become more, but is stymied by complications in the form of Shandi’s disapproving best friend Walcott, William’s cohort Paula, Shandi’s ever-feuding divorced parents, and William’s own heartbreaking and as-yet unresolved past. With a deft wit and a series of stellar twists, Jackson creates a conventional love story that is also something more: an exploration of what draws people together, and pushes them apart; a commentary on faith’s ability to unite or divide; and a reminder that “death brushing past makes people hungry to connect to other people.” What emerges is a novel at once funny and touching, whose characters’ many flaws are overshadowed by all the ways in which they look out for one another. The final denouement of Jackson’s roller-coaster love story will leave the reader both thoroughly sated and hungry for more. (Dec.)

Bookreporter.com

This charming page-turner serves up a twist I never remotely expected, followed by an utterly satisfying conclusion.

BookPage

There are scenes that will make you gasp, pause or even tear up as Jackson’s characters fumble toward imperfect enlightenment. Someone Else’s Love Story will delight and surprise with its unexpected compassion, empathy and humanity.

Wichita Falls Times Record Review

Joshilyn Jackson is a brilliant storyteller and has a unique gift of bringing quirkiness to her characters and a lot of twists and turns to her tale.

USA Today

[T]here is love at [this novel’s] heart… there is much to gain from a closer read.” (3 out of 4 stars)

Greenville News

Someone Else’s Love Story is never predictable, full of humor and heart and characters you can’t help but love.

Dallas Morning News on SOMEONE ELSE'S LOVE STORY

A surprising novel, both graceful and tender. You won’t be able to put it down.

Atlanta Magazine

Finely drawn characters make the miraculous plausible, from the opening hostage scene in a North Georgia convenience store to an ending that hits the mark of ‘surprising yet inevitable’ mastered and articulated by Flannery O’Connor.

Omaha World-Herald

Someone Else’s Love Story is worth reading, even studying. Expressions of love come in many forms, as Jackson shows.

Susan Elizabeth Phillips

That rare woman’s novel that is sure to please readers of popular fiction as well as literary fiction. A terrific pageturner!

Booklist on SOMEONE ELSE'S LOVE STORY

An inspiring story of love, faith and redemption...All of the characters... are so vividly drawn, they fairly leap off the page.

People (3 ½ stars)

Witty, cleverly constructed and including a truly surprising twist, Someone Else’s Love Story turns out to be a nuanced exploration of faith, family and the things we do for love.

Library Journal

09/15/2013
Destiny. That's what Shandi Pierce is convinced brought her and scientist William Ashe together during a robbery at a Circle K store in rural Georgia, and that is what's going to help her answer a question that has been plaguing her for years. However, as their stories become more entwined and secrets from their pasts are revealed, Shandi wonders if she even wants the answer at all. VERDICT Jackson's sixth novel (after A Grown Up Kind of Pretty) is original and amusing, and the plot takes an unexpected turn with the introduction of a new character late in the book. Unfortunately, the clunky transitions among narrators and jumps between the past and present distract at times from the story. Still, Jackson's many fans and those who love authentic Southern fiction should enjoy this title. [See Prepub Alert, 6/3/13.]—Amber McKee, Cumberland Univ. Lib., Lebanon, TN

Kirkus Reviews

Jackson's novel perfectly captures the flavor and rhythm of Southern life as a young woman preparing for college finds herself caught up in a real-life drama. Shandi has a miracle baby. His name is Nathan, but she and her BFF, Walcott, call the precocious 3-year-old genius Natty. As Shandi moves out of her mother's home to her successful physician father's condominium in Atlanta, she, Walcott and Natty become caught up in an armed robbery. It's during this robbery that Shandi meets William Ashe, a giant of a man with a palpable, lingering sorrow. When William takes a bullet during the robbery, Shandi decides to take on William and starts caring for him on the day he leaves the hospital. In due course, she discovers that William's suffered a tragic loss and finds herself fighting both his memories of happier times and his best friend, Paula, who makes it clear she wants Shandi out of the picture. However, Shandi is coping with a dilemma she thinks William can help her resolve: discovering the identity of the man who fathered her child. Shandi conceived Natty after being raped at a college party years before and still has enough of his DNA to possibly deduce his identity. William, a research scientist, has both the tools and the know-how to narrow down, if not figure out, just who her attacker might be. Jackson draws on her own Southern roots to paint this pitch-perfect portrait of a girl from a small town in Georgia. She traces Shandi's struggles to figure out what, if anything, William really means to her. Wrapped in a thoughtful, often funny and insightful narrative that brings Shandi and those in her satellite to life, Jackson presents the reader with a story that is never predictable and is awash in bittersweet love, regret and the promise of what could be. A surprising novel, both graceful and tender. You won't be able to put it down.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170209996
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	03/04/2021
Edition description:	Unabridged

Related Subjects

• Fiction
• Literature
• Literary Fiction

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