Tome Thursday: The Bourbon Kings

Hello everyone!

Whew, today has been a long day. My arms are beginning to ache a little so this blog post may be a little shorter, or maybe I'll start typing and not want to stop, who knows? But I'm powering through, because I want to be on top of these posts now that I'm back, after all.

So I did have a different book lined up for this week's review, because I happened to finish a couple while I was on vacation, and since then at home, BUT.

And there's a big BUT here.

I finished one yesterday which pretty much made me do a couple of spinning circles around my room, rocking back and forth trying to figure out what the hell just happened, and on top of it all, I now have to wait a FULL YEAR before the next one's published. 

Seriously.

I am, of course, talking about JR Ward's newest book, The Bourbon Kings.

Let's be honest here: most people, or a very large majority of them, have read her Black Dagger Brotherhood series. Because, for one, it's got vampires, and two, they're sexy as hell.

No pun intended.

So when news broke that the author was going to try her hand at a different kind of story, a sort of more real life kind of thing, I was intrigued. And now I've learned they've sold rights to make a TV show after this! Um, can someone say yes, please?

But I digress.

The Bourbon Kings is a story about a powerful, old money family in the South, distillers of course, makers of fine Bourbon, and their net worth is enough to save the whole planet from poverty a coupl of times over. But the family itself is fairly dysfunctional, so I'm going to go right down the family members to start this off.

The patiarch, William, married into the Bradford family, and has been ruling with an iron fist - but he's been beating his kids all their lives, sleeping with his son's wife, doping up his wown wife ... yeah, you name it, he probably did it.

Edward, the eldest, is currently a few inches short of a cripple, because he was abducted in South America and tortured because his father didn't want to pay the ransom. Some speculate William actually had him abducted in the first place ... he now runs his own stables, but his younger brother enlists his help when things start falling apart.

Tulane, or Lane for short, is the main character of the book from the Bradford clan, and probably the sanest one ... although he's a womanizer, married to someone he doesn't love, because Chantal was pregnant, and she aborted later, and he loves his family's horticulturist, and and and ... yeah.

Max is an enigma, since he's only ever mentioned in flashbacks, and tat he's fallen off the grid. Maybe in following books?

And then there's Virginia ... or Gin for short. The only daughter, who got pregnant at seventeen, or maybe even younger, never told the father even though she loves him, had a daughter, and is now marrying a complete idiot to save her own rich lifestyle. Although to be honest, if the love of her life hadn't been a complete jerk, they could have had a happily ever after already.

That out of the way, the main storyline is that Lane comes home to Easterly estate because he receives a call that the chief cook, Miss Aurora, who has basically raised the kids in the house all their lives, has relapsed into cancer, and she's dying. In the process, since it's the Derby Weekend, he reconnects with Lizzie ... and they start a relationship again while he navigates the waters of his family relationships, and his upcoming divorce. But things don't go smoothly as there are communication issues, trust issues, Chantal issues (she needs a separate category, that one), and murder issues,

Yup.

I did like that Lane has a backbone though; when Lizzie does a stupid thing towards the end of the book, he pretty much tells her they've done that already, and that if she can't trust him there's no point in a relationship.

Me? I was dancing a victory dance.

The drama? Chantal gets sent to the ER because someone beat her up, and she accues Lane (also, she's pregnant with her father-in-law's child), but Lane figures it was actually his dad ... who is later found on the banks of the river, drowned. Suicide? Looks like it, until they find a finger with a family crest ring in a flower pot at Easterly.

Dun dun DUN.

Really, I keep repeating myself, but this book is the love child of Santa Barbara and Dynasty, married to Dallas, and parent to CSI: Kentucky, because it's got EVERYTHING in there. Like, everything.

So now it's until 2016 before we know anything more. And I can honestly hardly wait.

xx