Cue the applause for Backseat Saints by Joshilyn Jackson

One beautiful morning, Rose Mae Grandee got her Pawpy’s old gun from the box she’d hidden in the closet and went to shoot her husband, Thom, while he was on his morning run. All because a gypsy at the airport told her to. I’m not kidding. And as absurd as this sounds, it is the beginning of a really good book. Backseat Saints by Joshilyn Jackson is the story of Rose Mae, a beautiful young woman, who has been beat down by the men in her life since she was a child. From an abusive father to rotten boyfriends to cruel husband, Rose Mae has come to the place where she must change or die.

It’s hard to understand how women end up with such abusive men, and I’m sure that Rose Mae is a compilation of most women who end up in this situation. Beaten down to the point of believing that they aren’t of any value, it’s the rare woman who stands up and re-discovers herself. This is a page-turning account of one such woman. We are privy to the fear and pain of the abusive life that Rose Mae has endured, and cheering her on every step of the way in her escape from it. Along the way, Rose interacts with realistic characters, some a bit offbeat, but all are well portrayed and believable. Certain plot devices might seem a little contrived, but surprisingly, it didn’t bother me. (And contrived stuff usually drives me crazy…) I was rooting for Rose Mae all the way through the book, and enjoyed the heck out of seeing her become the woman she had been hiding her whole life.

Backseat Saints was a book that I picked up to glance through for a minute, just to determine it’s position in my “teetering tower o’ to-be-read books” and before I knew it, I had read three chapters and it was time to get dinner started. (Yup…that’s a spaghetti sauce stain on page 84.)

(Review copy provided by Grand Central Publishing)

My rating: