Hardcover, 320 Pages

Adult- Contemporary Romance

Review/ARC copy- TLC Book Tours

Warnings: Sexual Content, violence, language

4.5/5 Stars- (For 18&up)

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.

Thoughts

Set against the backdrop of southern delight Someone Else's Love Story introduces readers to Shandi and William, an odd and unlikely couple that meet under duress in a gas station hold up.

Jackson's characters had incredible depth and layers to connect you to their story, while William is rich in the past and cast mostly in his teen years with another woman, Shandi was developed in the present and her struggles with the now. Twelve years William's junior the girl has some problems..one of them being the men in her life. Left long ago by a father who remarried and started a new family, a male best friend who seemingly takes care of everything and a son who needs her for everything, I think as a reader I could tie the links between her attraction to older men and the present absence of a father in her life. Shandi also struggles with the circumstances of her son Natty, which until the gas station hold-up she has denied. While Shandi has a lot of garbage to sort through and a child to take care of, her feelings for William are overwhelming, she thinks its destiny, her Thor come to rescue her, but William comes with a ton of baggage and heartbreak, and as we see into his past and the inter workings of his thought process one can only hope that he can move forward and find love again but at the same time we know its almost impossible.

I loved this complicated yet realistic story involving all these characters, I wanted to see William and Shandi work their crap out and find a way to come together, there were sparks but never enough to push them completely over the edge, which as a reader I found so frustrating, I knew something was off but could never figure out why. When it seemed that the perfect time arises these characters just couldn't connect and not until the end did I see why, and not until the end do you see why Jackson is such a wonderful writer and gifted at telling a story.

A surprising love story that weaves its tale quietly within another love story that is touching and heartbreaking at the same time, leaving you guessing till the end and smiling when its done.

Joshilyn Jackson is the New York Times bestselling author of six novels, including gods in Alabama and A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty. Her books have been translated into a dozen languages. A former actor, Jackson is also an award-winning audiobook narrator. She lives in Decatur, Georgia, with her husband and their two children.

Find out more about Joshilyn at her website, connect with her onFacebook, and follow her on Twitter.

Thanks to William Morrow and TLC Book Tours for review copy.