So let me preface this a touch: 
 I bought this book a month or so before the whole "This is the movie Shelter" kerfluffle started. By pure coincidence, I saw the movie for the first time about a week before it blew up. So, I absolutely had no way of reading this book without looking to compare the two to some degree. I read DSP's response before reading the story, and after having read the story, I agree with it. (That said, the book still has some issues.) 
 The similarities to the movie are fairly surface. Sure, maybe he shouldn't have worked in a grocery store, but the truth is that the store is a minor freaking detail. You could have mentally replaced the words 'grocery store' with 'gas station' and nearly gotten the same effect. Yes, the characters and ages line up with those from the movie. But there's really a lot more depth to the relationships that the movie just didn't have the time to explore. (This is somewhat to the story's detriment, though, since it's first person POV from the same character the entire time. I'll get to that.) 
 So, copyright infringement? No, I don't see it. Inspiration? Definitely. Maybe a little too much? Eh, it's debatable, and that's been done, and I'm not going there. 
 Read it if you were thinking about reading it. 
 Good, do we have that out of the way now? Let's move on to the review: 
 The story is solid and generally entertaining. The characters and characterizations are wonderful. The Kid is fabulous. Mrs. Paquinn is quite the comedienne. We don't see a lot of Creed and Anna, but they are treated consistently and fairly. (The "Hey," "Hey yourself" did get old, but it was consistent.) Otter is a rock, though he still makes mistakes. And we get to know Bear very well since the story is all his POV. 
 But oh my GOD, the monologuing. The middle of the story drug a lot because we're stuck in Bear's POV, listening to him freak out about how "he's not like that." I got the idea the first three times. Move on with the story, kthx. Bear's endless analogy of the ocean and storm he's fighting against got fairly old too. Sure, some of the time it was poignant, but particularly toward the end it was skimmed because there are only so many ways to use the same analogy over and over and over again. 
 The repetitiveness of things said previously in the story (Bear reviewing memories mostly) bothered me fairly early on, but it happens throughout the story. One review of an entire letter toward the end of the story really annoyed me. I think the whole book might have benefited from being around 25% shorter than it is. 
 And the time-hopping toward the end of the story really pissed me off. I saw zero need for that. If it was supposed to create tension and keep me reading, what it actually succeeded in was pissing me off and making me skim through it. I can count the number of stories I've done any skimming in on one hand. That's how rarely I skim. So, it's really bad if I'm skimming to get on with it. (It's like looking at my watch in the movie theater - always my sign of a badly-paced movie.) 
 So, for the record, there were no stars added or removed because of the whole Shelter thing. It is irrelevant to my review; I mention it only so people know I am aware of it. 
 I probably would have given the story 4 or 4.5 stars except for the monologuing, repetitiveness, and time-hopping, so that's why it gets 3 stars.