Someone Else's Love Story by Joshilyn Jackson

The reader can’t be blamed for at first finding Shandi’s insistence that her lovely, brilliant boy is the product of parthenogenesis somewhat ridiculous. Like Shandi, William, too, will find his attempts to avoid reality increasingly difficult. The robbery happens on a painful anniversary, and he’s spent a year trying to push the memories of his now-destroyed family out of his head.

A scientist who looks rather like a Nordic lumberjack, he’s a touch autistic. The robbery causes William to realize a few things as well. It also makes her believe she’s in love with William, her savior. The trauma of the robbery forces Shandi to realize that her son’s conception could not have been what she thought it was. Her son is the product of what she wants to believe is an immaculate conception she didn’t lose her virginity till after Natty was born by C-section, when she begged her longtime best friend, Walcott, to perform the defloration. Most of the book is narrated by Shandi, the product of a mixed marriage of a fundamentalist Christian mother and Jewish father.

That hostage is William Ashe, and his fellow hostages include a young woman named Shandi Pierce and her 3-year-old son, Natty. The catalyst for self-knowledge turns out to be a botched robbery at the local Circle K-a gas station, for those of you who aren’t in the Atlanta metro area-attempted by a snaggle-toothed little punk who is promptly brained by one of his hostages. The folks in Joshilyn Jackson’s sixth novel, Someone Else’s Love Story, are in all kinds of trouble, but they don’t know it right away.

Someone Else's Love Story by Joshilyn Jackson