Backseat Saints by Joshilyn Jackson

• Title: Backseat Saints 
• Classification: Adult Fiction
• Genre: Realistic Fiction
  
• Format: Paperback, 368 pages
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing; Reprint edition (May 4, 2011)
• ISBN-10: 0446582379
• ISBN-13: 978-0446582377 
• Notes: This book contains violence in the form of spousal abuse.

"It was an airport gypsy who told me that I had to kill my husband. She may have been the first to say the words out loud, but she was only giving voice to a thing I'd been trying not to know for a long, long time."

There are points in everyone's life that we remember as a turning point. Where something significant happens or we come to a realization that drastically alters our life. The day Ro Grandee met the gypsy at the airport was one of those days. When she was told it was her or her husband who would die, she decided to pick herself to be the survivor. Some might ask why she wouldn't just divorce the man? That, however, is not an option when your husband makes it clear if you ever left him he'd kill you, literally. So when you're damned to die if you stay, your survival instincts tend to kick in. After attempting to shoot her husband, Ro comes to the realization she doesn't have what it takes to kill the man. Thus begins her search to come up with an alternate way of getting out of her current situation.   

This is not the sort of book I usually read. One of the more active members of my Goodreads group selected it to be one of our books of the month. When I started reading it I wasn't sure if I truly wanted to continue, but I'm glad I did. This book gives you a look into the feelings and thought process of Ro, the wife of an abusive husband. She partially blames herself for being "bad", which in everyone else's book would equate to not being perfect. We are introduced to her at her worst, when she is attempting to kill her husband. Slowly, as the book progresses, we get to know her and the story of how she met her husband, and get an idea of why she's stayed so long in the relationship. There are some twists and turns in the book, and the ending was not at all what I expected. I gave this one 3 out of 5 roses.