Helpful Score: 10
Here it is, one of two big releases in July and a much-touted hardcover by JR Ward, the author who made a name for herself with the angsty vamps of the Black Dagger Brotherhood.
The Bourbon Kings is a classic "sweeping family epic" replete with stereotypical characters and tired plot elements:
Daddy Dearest (who married the family with the fortune) - Abusive, controlling, hateful, liar, cheat, embezzler, and all around utterly despicable man. (He probably had bad breath too.)
Absent Mother - Weak, insipid, lame, and a nonentity. Rather than crawling into a bottle of the family's bourbon she climbed into doctor's drugs and lives - if you can call it that - in her bedroom.
Eldest Son - Heir to the business and respected by the board, he was quickly moving into position to take over the family business. Physically broken by a South American kidnapping (likely engineered by said Despicable Daddy Dearest) who turns alcoholic horse-breeder.
Youngest Prodigal Son - Our 'brooding reluctant hero'. Screws clinging deb, leaves deb, falls for head gardener, declares love for gardener, learns deb is preggers, marries deb, leaves for NYC and the sofa of an old college chum where he crashes for 2 years trying to drink himself to death while torturing self for his mistakes. Oddly, he seems incapable of calling a divorce attorney, so stupid comes in here too, though I think we're supposed to see tortured hero. hummmm .......... Apparently 'stupid' has a new definition.
Vacuous Deb - Gets knocked up deliberately to coerce youngest to marry her. Stays at family mansion when new hubby deserts her for a couch in NYC. Gets abortion to keep her figure. Is screwing Daddy Dearest and ........ well, some history just repeats itself.
Middle Son - WHO?????
Slutty Sister - Vain, vapid and manipulative and does phone sex while hairdresser works on her, so throw in tacky. (Or just throw up. Your choice.) Complete with out of wedlock child at 17 and now a parasite on the family fortune. Sold to a yucky toad son of liquor distributor by Despicable Daddy Dearest for an advantageous contract. Realizes family is broke - runs to toad. Underwear optional.
Daughter of Arch Competitor - In love with broken eldest son and holds mortgage on their family estate. Juliet to his unwilling, alcoholic, self-loathing Romeo. These people all need shrinks.
Loyal Head Cook - and the 'real' mother to the boys. Her being taken to the hospital means the Prodigal returns to the bosom of his family.
Head Gardener - Blond, hard-working, honest, loyal, and a glutton for punishment for hanging around this estate despite a masters in horticulture. Leaps to conclusions. Maybe she should have applied to Longwood Gardens and skipped the whole nightmare of 'forbidden love'.
Assorted hangers on, supporting players, fast cars, family jet.
Missing - Shoulder pads, big hair, catchy, dramatic theme song while panning opening film of dynastic estate, and JR Ewing - who would have at least made things interesting. (Just a moment, I'm having an '80's flashback to Loverboy doing Everybody's Working for the Weekend and need to regain my sanity.) Great, now I have an earworm. OK, so let's assume you miss the original Dallas, Falcon Crest, and Dynasty, (and I'll ignore your obvious need for therapy), well rejoice!!!! You have found your book! Shallow, predictable, boring, trite, tedious, boring, ...... wait I said that, hang on ...... insipid, dull, humdrum, and .............. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
The Bourbon Kings is a melodramatic, overwrought, snoozefest and gets a resounding D (2*) and a suggestion that you SAVE YOURSELF! Go buy something else, I beg you! I swear I could feel brain cells dying by page 60. Purchased from BAM and I should have just burned the money. I could have toasted some marshmallows in the flames.
The Bourbon Kings is a classic "sweeping family epic" replete with stereotypical characters and tired plot elements:
Daddy Dearest (who married the family with the fortune) - Abusive, controlling, hateful, liar, cheat, embezzler, and all around utterly despicable man. (He probably had bad breath too.)
Absent Mother - Weak, insipid, lame, and a nonentity. Rather than crawling into a bottle of the family's bourbon she climbed into doctor's drugs and lives - if you can call it that - in her bedroom.
Eldest Son - Heir to the business and respected by the board, he was quickly moving into position to take over the family business. Physically broken by a South American kidnapping (likely engineered by said Despicable Daddy Dearest) who turns alcoholic horse-breeder.
Youngest Prodigal Son - Our 'brooding reluctant hero'. Screws clinging deb, leaves deb, falls for head gardener, declares love for gardener, learns deb is preggers, marries deb, leaves for NYC and the sofa of an old college chum where he crashes for 2 years trying to drink himself to death while torturing self for his mistakes. Oddly, he seems incapable of calling a divorce attorney, so stupid comes in here too, though I think we're supposed to see tortured hero. hummmm .......... Apparently 'stupid' has a new definition.
Vacuous Deb - Gets knocked up deliberately to coerce youngest to marry her. Stays at family mansion when new hubby deserts her for a couch in NYC. Gets abortion to keep her figure. Is screwing Daddy Dearest and ........ well, some history just repeats itself.
Middle Son - WHO?????
Slutty Sister - Vain, vapid and manipulative and does phone sex while hairdresser works on her, so throw in tacky. (Or just throw up. Your choice.) Complete with out of wedlock child at 17 and now a parasite on the family fortune. Sold to a yucky toad son of liquor distributor by Despicable Daddy Dearest for an advantageous contract. Realizes family is broke - runs to toad. Underwear optional.
Daughter of Arch Competitor - In love with broken eldest son and holds mortgage on their family estate. Juliet to his unwilling, alcoholic, self-loathing Romeo. These people all need shrinks.
Loyal Head Cook - and the 'real' mother to the boys. Her being taken to the hospital means the Prodigal returns to the bosom of his family.
Head Gardener - Blond, hard-working, honest, loyal, and a glutton for punishment for hanging around this estate despite a masters in horticulture. Leaps to conclusions. Maybe she should have applied to Longwood Gardens and skipped the whole nightmare of 'forbidden love'.
Assorted hangers on, supporting players, fast cars, family jet.
Missing - Shoulder pads, big hair, catchy, dramatic theme song while panning opening film of dynastic estate, and JR Ewing - who would have at least made things interesting. (Just a moment, I'm having an '80's flashback to Loverboy doing Everybody's Working for the Weekend and need to regain my sanity.) Great, now I have an earworm. OK, so let's assume you miss the original Dallas, Falcon Crest, and Dynasty, (and I'll ignore your obvious need for therapy), well rejoice!!!! You have found your book! Shallow, predictable, boring, trite, tedious, boring, ...... wait I said that, hang on ...... insipid, dull, humdrum, and .............. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
The Bourbon Kings is a melodramatic, overwrought, snoozefest and gets a resounding D (2*) and a suggestion that you SAVE YOURSELF! Go buy something else, I beg you! I swear I could feel brain cells dying by page 60. Purchased from BAM and I should have just burned the money. I could have toasted some marshmallows in the flames.
Helpful Score: 3
So, a rather disappointing start. I felt that the characters and story were 'expected.' Nothing that happened was surprising or, IMO, original. I also felt that it was rather rushed...I am sad to say this as I am a huge fan of the Warden but this was just not up to her normal standards. One last note, and maybe this is just me, but I had a really hard time feeling bad for any of them (except maybe Edward at first)and frankly the age of us feeling sorry for the rich people falling on hard times has passed.
I think I have read this book many times before. Nothing surprising or new in the plot. Characters are awful. I do like Ms. Aurora, she is the most interesting character in the book. Shelby may turn out to be okay. I truly expected better from Ms Ward. She needs to stick to the vampires.
Kristen S. (SomethingSmarter) reviewed The Bourbon Kings (Bourbon Kings, Bk 1) on + 48 more book reviews
As the first book in the series, I expected there to be a slow build, and I certainly got that. But once the stories started moving, they really got going.
This family reminds me of Dynasty or Dallas, the old nighttime soaps of the 80's. It's awesome. Dysfunctional family, crazy people, drama, and money. It's seriously like reading a modern day Dynasty.
This first book focuses on the relationship between Lane and Lizzie, but their 'love story' isn't the entire focus of the book. You get introduced to nearly all the non-adult kids of the dynasty, their parents and mock parents, and the 'help' around the big compound. Complicated relationships abound, stemmed from an abusive father and a mother with dependency issues.
This family reminds me of Dynasty or Dallas, the old nighttime soaps of the 80's. It's awesome. Dysfunctional family, crazy people, drama, and money. It's seriously like reading a modern day Dynasty.
This first book focuses on the relationship between Lane and Lizzie, but their 'love story' isn't the entire focus of the book. You get introduced to nearly all the non-adult kids of the dynasty, their parents and mock parents, and the 'help' around the big compound. Complicated relationships abound, stemmed from an abusive father and a mother with dependency issues.
Kathleen K. (katydid597) -
I love J. R. Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood series, and I was fortunate enough to win the 2nd book in this series - The Angels' Share - from Goodreads, so I had to read this first. It's fairly slow going, but I attribute that to the need to set up the characters and the settings, but it seems pretty draggy for this author. I'm used to lots of action and this didn't deliver from the start like I'm used to.
Major dysfunctional family, made me really feel sorry for the poor rich kids and I've never felt that way before. If this is even close to true, I'm really glad I'm middle class. Their childhood with their father left way to much to be desired, and the one truly saving grace was their cook and "real" mother Aurora. She raised them as she would have if they had been her children, and they never lacked for love or discipline when she was around. I have read that many of the Southern wealthy families had their black maids (think The Help) and servants raise the children, and that was the case here. Both parents were pathetic, the father as an abuser and the mother as a doormat, and love was a lost cause in the long run.
None of the kids, 3 boys and a girl, had a good grasp on how to live in the real world, it seems that money is a great padding to keep the world at arm's length, and, when the reality of eminent bankruptcy hits, everyone has a different reaction. Gin, the daughter, can't foresee a life that doesn't include a massive fortune, so she is willing to marry someone who really does resemble her father, especially in the abuse department. Edward, the eldest, has already parted ways with the family. He was to become the leader in the family's bourbon business, but after having been kidnapped and tortured nearly to death on a South American business trip, he purchased Red and Black, the family's stables and is now breeding and racing Thoroughbreds. Maxwell, the 2nd son, isn't well characterized in this book, and hopefully we will learn more about him as the series continues. Lane, the youngest son, has supported himself by playing poker in New York, staying with a college friend.
When Lane received a call that Mama Aurora was in very poor health and in the hospital, he headed for home and all heck breaks loose. He had been involved with their master gardener Lizzie King before he left and the affair had ended when he married his pregnant, but unloved, college girlfriend. Now he was returning to a house that had both women and to a family that was unbelievably screwed up. Somehow he finds himself delegated the savior of the business and the family and his solutions are rather eye-opening to say the least.
I did enjoy the book, but I wasn't blown away by it. It was slow reading at times, but when an author has to set up so much, it does take time and pages. I found it hard to relate to the protagonists, and I don't think it was so much due to their financial status as it was to the fact that I had a hard time believing that they were worth saving. At least by the end of the book I liked them a bit better. It's worth the read though, as the second book is much better. It was a good thing I had it on hand since this one ends in a cliff-hanger.
Major dysfunctional family, made me really feel sorry for the poor rich kids and I've never felt that way before. If this is even close to true, I'm really glad I'm middle class. Their childhood with their father left way to much to be desired, and the one truly saving grace was their cook and "real" mother Aurora. She raised them as she would have if they had been her children, and they never lacked for love or discipline when she was around. I have read that many of the Southern wealthy families had their black maids (think The Help) and servants raise the children, and that was the case here. Both parents were pathetic, the father as an abuser and the mother as a doormat, and love was a lost cause in the long run.
None of the kids, 3 boys and a girl, had a good grasp on how to live in the real world, it seems that money is a great padding to keep the world at arm's length, and, when the reality of eminent bankruptcy hits, everyone has a different reaction. Gin, the daughter, can't foresee a life that doesn't include a massive fortune, so she is willing to marry someone who really does resemble her father, especially in the abuse department. Edward, the eldest, has already parted ways with the family. He was to become the leader in the family's bourbon business, but after having been kidnapped and tortured nearly to death on a South American business trip, he purchased Red and Black, the family's stables and is now breeding and racing Thoroughbreds. Maxwell, the 2nd son, isn't well characterized in this book, and hopefully we will learn more about him as the series continues. Lane, the youngest son, has supported himself by playing poker in New York, staying with a college friend.
When Lane received a call that Mama Aurora was in very poor health and in the hospital, he headed for home and all heck breaks loose. He had been involved with their master gardener Lizzie King before he left and the affair had ended when he married his pregnant, but unloved, college girlfriend. Now he was returning to a house that had both women and to a family that was unbelievably screwed up. Somehow he finds himself delegated the savior of the business and the family and his solutions are rather eye-opening to say the least.
I did enjoy the book, but I wasn't blown away by it. It was slow reading at times, but when an author has to set up so much, it does take time and pages. I found it hard to relate to the protagonists, and I don't think it was so much due to their financial status as it was to the fact that I had a hard time believing that they were worth saving. At least by the end of the book I liked them a bit better. It's worth the read though, as the second book is much better. It was a good thing I had it on hand since this one ends in a cliff-hanger.
Very entertaining! I couldn't put it down.
