Someone Else’s Love Story by Joshilyn Jcakson
Published By: William Morrow (@WmMorrowBks),
an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers (@HarperCollins)
Original publication date: 19th November, 2013; this is the paperback reprint
Official Author Websites: Site | @joshilynjackson| Facebook
Available Formats: Hardcover, Paperback, Ebook
Converse via: #SomeoneElsesLoveSory
Acquired Book By:
I was selected to be a tour stop on the “Someone Else’s Love Story” virtual book tour through TLC Book Tours. I received a complimentary copy of the book direct from the publisher William Morrow, in exchange for an honest review. I did not receive compensation for my opinions or thoughts shared herein.
A notation on the Unexpected Extras:
The edition of Someone Else’s Love Story is the special “P.S.” edition of which I happily expressed my enthused response in receiving on behalf of: The Ghost Bride. In this particular case, it drew to light my collection of music is also stored inside of a box at the moment, as I would have happily pulled out my Indigo Girls albums to play in the background once I learnt that Ms. Jackson listened to them whilst creating this novel! (apparently they were excellent for cluing into Shandi) How lovely! Now when she said William’s song was “Gone Gone Gone” by Philip Phillips I nearly couldn’t believe my eyes — it is simply one of my favourite songs by Phillips! And, I’m always especially grateful he performs live on television as I happily have seen him a few times, most recently during the Capitol Fourth celebration on PBS! Further glee for me was reading Walcott is represented aptly through “Ho Hey” by the Lumineers! Seriously!? I can so dig this author! And, I hadn’t even picked up the novel to read yet! Just by saying Paula would be a vocal hybrid of Pink & Regina Spektor (of whom I have seen live in person!) made perfect sense to me — even though I had yet to see her in the story! Laughs.
I am as connected to music as Jackson, and therefore, all these little hints about which musicians and artists would best represent them in song and musical threads of creative voice felt right to me! And, this is what I am saying about the “P.S.” editions by William Morrow, they give you such a hearty insight behind the pen as to allow you to learn a bit more than you were expecting to be able to know!
I listened to each of these ahead of reading the story:
- (Shandi) “Hammer And a Nail” by Indigo Girls – http://youtu.be/yTI2GGNFR_U
- (William) “Gone, Gone, Gone” by Philip Phillips – http://youtu.be/oozQ4yV__Vw
- (Walcott) “Ho Hey” by the Lumineers – http://youtu.be/zvCBSSwgtg4
- And, I saved this for after I concluded the story:
- “Rise” by Eddie Vedder – http://youtu.be/1QO191imv0s
I am always happily surprised by the enclosures I find within the review books I receive in the Post; this particular one was a finished copy and therefore I am not expecting to find an enclosure unless the publicist includes the Press Sheet for the author and novel. This time I was more than happily surprised to find a *bookmark!*, and yes, you can definitely believe me when I tell you that I get quite giddy finding *bookmarks!* enclosed with books for review! I have quite the lovely collection of bookmarks I’ve collected over the years since I was a young child, however, all of those are stored in a box and not readily easy to pull out. Imagine my surprise joy to find this bookmark is for the novel: All You Could Ask For by Mike Greenburg! A novel I have heard a considerable amount of praise as much as I have been on the fence if I can handle reading it or not. Mostly as I know its going to be an emotional read and learning on this bookmark he’s donating all proceeds of the novel to Breast Cancer Research is incredible! He even set up his own foundation (Heidi’s Angels) in order to re-direct the funds to The V Foundation for Cancer Research.
I do state my hesitation to read stories where cancer is front and center on my Review Policy, as I simply have a sensitive heart and I am always being careful about the level of emotional drama I can handle reading. Recently, the novel which truly gutted me emotionally was actually a war drama (I Shall Be Near To You) which was both a surprise and a wake-up call to be a bit more cognisant of the story-lines I’m reading right now. I think my heart is always quite open to stories, but whether or not I’m able to handle their contents is another matter entirely. I always celebrate writers who donate their proceeds to a worthy cause and therefore, I am thankful to William Morrow for enclosing this bookmark and drawing my eye towards the beautiful generosity of this author. Even if I may or may not be able to read the novel, I’ll always know a novel I can give as a gift and perhaps lift someone else’s spirits in the process.
I happily used the bookmark to read Someone Else’s Love Story!
Someone Else's Love Story
by Joshilyn Jackson
Source: Publisher via TLC Book Tours
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.
Places to find the book:
Genres: Contemporary (Modern) Fiction (post 1945), Southern Lit, Women's Fiction
Published by William Morrow
on 5th August, 2014
Format: Paperback
Pages: 336
Author Biography:
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.
Listen to an Excerpt of the Novel : Read by Joshilyn Jackson
On listening to the Excerpt after reaching page 8:
Normally I seek out an Excerpt on either SoundCloud or Scribd long before I pick up a novel to read, however, I started to get a hankering for hearing how the character of Sandi might be read aloud which had me googling the title of the novel with “SoundCloud” as part of the search feature! I’ve found that is a much quicker route to getting to where your going on SoundCloud at least until I can restore my links in my sidebar which haven’t materalised since I self-hosted in late August; as it requires a re-organisation of the categories. Listening to the author reveal the voice for Shandi was as ingenius of my listening to The Ghost Bride for each of these authors Choo & Jackson have such a distinctive gift for reading aloud their own works of fiction!
My Review of Someone Else’s Love Story:
On the upstart of reading this story, with singer-songwriters inside my localised short-term memory, I couldn’t help but feel the rhythm of Shandi. She’s a straight from the hip character who doesn’t pay any mind to what she’s saying as long as what she has to say is the honest truth. She’s a Southern gal with a heart of gold as far as being a mother is concerned, and attempting to get a firm step in the world by finishing her degree. The dichotomy of a difference between living in the country outside of Atlanta and being front and square at its hub presents a balancing act between her parents. With a Mum divorced and a father remarried, I had to consider her strength as a young 21 year old Mum as a character who had her head on straight even if her immediate family vexed her quite a bit. The entrance of Walcott was quite classic, as he’s the best friend she could always rely on whose family was as quirky as hers but in a different way.
Someone Else’s Love Story is about the randomness of our hours being set on a course for collision – a collision of time and the temporal search for meaning to understand what cannot be understood. At least, this is the set-up within the first chapters as we start to begin to meet the characters who alight inside the narrative. Shandi is on schedule to start a new chapter in her life whereas William is still resolving the ending of his; they collide into each other in a very random and normal way, yet it’s how their lives intersect that draws in the reader’s breath. The anguish of William’s loss and the depth of his personal struggle to contain his emotions and process what his mind is speaking to him is without measure. He’s a step apart from others his age, very methodological and precise, working in the field of science and forsaking most of any other ordinary life’s regular routine. He is of the world but he chooses not to always live inside it.
Jackson has a way of conceiving characters who challenge convention yet draw your attention to their flaws in a way that triggers a humbling empathic response. She draws you into the story with her penchant for Southern Lit and the echoes of how that slice of story is meant to be told. There is a sway to the tone within the story itself, a particular way of finding a connection to the voice of her characters and of giving the reader a reason to be invested. By the time you reach the climax at the height of the scene in the mini-mart you’re already convinced you need to know how this will work out for Shandi, William, and Natty. Natty is Shandi’s precocious three year old son who tested off the chart for a boy similar to Little Man Tate.
I honestly thought the moment inside the mini-mart might have been a five minute ordeal, a stepping stone into the rest of the story, yet Jackson proved me wrong by giving me the full court press of a robbery attempt during daylight hours in full disruption of the lives within the building. There is an undercurrent of philosophical questions knitting into the heart of our place in our lives and how our lives have an effect on the world outside our centermost point. Each ripple of our actions transforms the whole of the continuance of time and this novel attempts to fuse theory with narrative. In the back of the dialogue, the soul searching narration, and the climax of the mini-mart there is an undercurrent of mystery; shrouded details of a past wicked out by a memory Shandi no longer sees as relevant. The more her mind unravells the truth of what she hopes to deny yet doesn’t trust not to believe, the more we see her in different shades of light. My favourite part of her character is her acceptance and honest love for her son, Natty. She truly embraced being a mother and despite the hurdles she has in life, her son completes her world.
Someone Else’s Love Story starts off on an emotional keel so bent on breaking your heart that it never loses its momentum for presenting a slow brewing anguish of trauma and circumstances that broke the will of the characters. The emotions are thickened and pulsing throughout the story, to the point where I simply wanted something to turn out right, if only for one of them. It is a gutting realistic theory of how you have to find a way to move forward after the unthinkable happens and how to define who you are in the face of the truth you’ve tried to hide.
On the writing style of Joshilyn Jackson:
One of the anchors to this novel is poetry, a warm happy smile alight on my face as I realised this was going to be continuing thread as when you first open the novel, your greeted by Emily Dickinson’s most famous and quite eloquent eclipse on Hope. I appreciated the Author’s Acknowledgements as to give even a further clue as to who Ms. Jackson is as a writer, as a woman, and where she finds her center outside of writing. In combination with the pages I read in the P.S. additions in the Appendixes, this created quite a soothing start to a novel I was itching to read!
Fly in the Ointment:
Although sparse and spread out into various chapters, there are strong words used inside the novel itself; in some places it felt a bit apparent as to the reasoning behind it, yet at other times I’m not entirely sure why a certain word was used in lieu of another. For instance, I think I could creatively come up with a visual way of describing a desolated and deprived park without using a harsh word. They are little flitterments in the background and as annoying as the occasional fly on a hot Summer day whilst your on a picnic. They kept alighting in the story but I was more worried about Shandi, William, and Natty to not see where this was heading. I was already invested and wanted to know how their tale was going to end. I just didn’t appreciate the strongest of the words to always make such a fierce and unexpected blight on the page, as I was drawing closer to seeing what was going to happen. It wrinkles my nose everytime its included because I honestly cannot find a reason for it to be included.
This blog tour stop was courtesy of TLC Book Tours:
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I positively *love!* comments in the threads below each of my posts, and I have happily made sure that I could reacquire the WP Comments where you can leave me a comment by using: WP (WordPress), Twitter, Facebook, Google+, & Email! Kindly know that I appreciate each thought you want to share with me and all the posts on my blog are open to new comments & commentary! Short or long, I appreciate the time you spent to leave behind a note of your visit! Return again soon!
{SOURCES: Cover art of “Someone Else’s Love Story”, author photograph, book synopsis and the tour badge were all provided by TLC Book Tours and used with permission. Blog Tour badge provided by Parajunkee to give book bloggers definition on their blogs. Bookish Events badge created by Jorie in Canva. Post dividers by Fun Stuff for Your Blog via Pure Imagination. Buy links on SoundCloud excerpt are not affiliated with Jorie Loves A Story. Book Excerpt was able to be embedded due to codes provided by SoundCloud.}
Copyright © Jorie Loves A Story, 2014.
Wow, it sounds like this book grabs you from page one and never lets go!
Thanks for being a part of the tour.
Hallo Ms. Heather,
Yes, that is one way of putting it — I am still curious what other readers felt about the story-line and where the plot was taken overall. I need to wander back through the tour map & see if anyone else felt the way I had. It IS an attention grabber, but I’m still perplexed on my takeaway feelings over this one. Some stories make you muse about them even when your unsure if the lasting thought is positive or neutral.