Shandi and her little boy Natty are moving to Atlanta, after her father offers up his condo so she can be closer to college. Her best friend Walcott is helping with the move and the three stop at a Circle K on the way. Shandi and Natty go inside to get some drinks where a cute man looks lost looking at laundry detergent. Coming up with a thousand ways to approach him, she doesn't really notice another man enter the shop with a gun. He charges the cash register and robs the store but before leaving, a police officer enters the store and the robber shoots her. Realizing he can't leave, the robber takes everyone in to the back and both Shandi and the cute man, William, relive past events in the fear of not having any future ones.
Shandi gave birth to Natty a virgin. She has chosen to forget the day Natty was conceived but in the back of the Circle K, she starts to remember being drugged that night. William lost both his wife and kid in a car crash exactly a year ago. He forbid anyone from mentioning his wife's name infront of him shortly thereafter but starts to relive courting her during high school and remembering how much love they had for each other.
Having read quite a few of Jackson's books in the past I was looking forward to this one. She does a fantastic job of writing imperfect southern women. Shandi isn't the best character Jackson has written but she is typical to Jackson's writing. She's southern, she makes the reader like her, and she has many flaws that she acknowledges and tries to sort out. I think this is part of the reason why I like Jackson's books so much. The characters know they aren't perfect and they usually try to sort things out.
Also typical to Jackson books, this one was very easy to get in to. I started reading and felt like I couldn't stop. I needed to find out what these characters were hiding from themselves and how they were going to get past their issues.
Despite all this, by the time I completed the book and put it down, I felt a little bit let down. There were two reasons for this. The first was that the ending was crammed with revelations. In about 20 pages, there were two plot twists which made me feel like there wasn't enough time to digest what was happening and get resolution out of it. The second was the story of rape that seemed to get played down as not being a big deal. It's not surprising that the rapist himself tried not to make a big deal out of the rape, but when other characters started going along with it, it bothered me. Rape is rape, regardless of the back story that goes along with it.
Thank you to TLC Book Tours for letting me be a part of this book tour.
Buy the book here.
First Line: "I fell in love with William Ashe at gunpoint, in a Circle K."
Rating:
(3.5/5)
Everyone in the northern hemisphere is believed to be dead, following WWIII and the thousands of nuclear bombs dropped on the USA, China, Russia, and many other countries. The radioactive cloud is slowly making its way south, killing those in its path. An American Navy Captain is docking his submarine in Melbourne, Australia, one of the most southern major cities in the world. Captain Towers and his men were not able to return home after their last excursion and they believe that their families are now all dead. The Australians ask them to take one more trip up to Seattle where they are getting radio signals from. Australian Peter Holmes goes with the team and watches them pull close to the shore and call out for survivors, never seeing anyone.
In the previous novel, Ender's Game, the buggers are no longer threatening earth and Ender has become the Speaker for the dead for the buggers. As Ender and his sister Valerie travel the worlds, their names live on in infamy. Valerie continues to write, Ender continues to speak. When a speaker is requested on Lusitania when a xenologer is killed by a new race of species, the piggies, Ender knows he must travel to speak the death and find out what the piggies were malicious in their murder or whether it is a misunderstood custom. When Ender arrives, 22 years later, there has been an additional death and Ender knows he must save the piggies before yet another race is destroyed.
The third book in this series shows the four girls, Carmen, Tibby, Lena, and Bridget, as they have just finished high school and are in the summer before going to university. Carmen finds out that her mom is having a baby with David, her recently married husband, and questions her decision to leave home for school. Tibby's younger sister falls out a window which makes Tibby question how good of a sister she is. Hanging around the hospital so much, she meets a cute intern. Lena is taking art classes when her dad learns that she's drawing nudes in class and pulls his financial support for art school. This forces Lena to figure out how to win a scholarship to still be able to go to art school. And finally Bridget is back at soccer camp where Eric is also a coach. Everything comes full circle for her in this third summer.