The Bourbon Kings: Oh, my! This book sure is one giant soap opera (My thoughts on book #1 in the Bourbon Kings book series by J.R. Ward)

Let me start out by saying that originally I was planning to wait a while to read and review The Bourbon Kings. However, I decided to go ahead and read it now because I’ve wanted to read it for months, and I couldn’t stop thinking about how excited I was to read The Bourbon Kings. Right off the bat, I have to say that I absolutely loved this book. That being said, I’m just going to come right out and say that while I loved this book, there’s no denying that it also has a lot of problems, which I’ll get to later.

The main thing that I love about this book is the fact that it’s basically a soap opera in the form of a book. I’m a huge fan of soap operas, and I typically love just about anything that has a soap opera vibe to it. As soon as I read the plot description of the book that’s on jacket of book the first time that I saw The Bourbon Kings at Barnes & Noble, I immediately thought that the book sounded a lot like a soap opera, and most of the reviews for the book on Amazon also compared the book to Dallas and Dynasty. Reading so many reviews that compared the book to soap operas was definitely the thing that drew me to The Bourbon Kings the most. One thing that really helps this book to feel like a soap opera is fact that the story has a big ensemble of characters and a variety of storylines that the characters are involved in. While The Bourbon Kings is definitely an ensemble piece, at the end of the day, it’s very much Lane’s story. He’s definitely the character that gets the most focus and development throughout the book. I should probably also mention that technically Lane’s name is Tulane. Yeah, I would definitely go by the name Lane, too. Tulane sounds like an extremely ridiculous name that would most likely cause the bullies at school to tease anybody with that name every day of their life and maybe even beat them up, too.

The Bourbon Kings’ ensemble nature is one of the things that really helped the book to feel like a soap opera. However, it also definitely leads to one of this book’s biggest problems, which is that it was often times kind of challenging to keep track of all the characters and subplots in book. You almost need to make a very complicated chart to keep track of all the one trillion characters in this book, the numerous subplots and which characters are involved in each of the subplots. While the book doesn’t actually have a trillion characters in it, this book does have a lot of characters to keep track of, and unfortunately too many of the characters were woefully neglected and left underdeveloped, if you ask me. 

As weird as this might sound to some people, while this book reminded me a lot of soap operas like Dallas, Dynasty and Revenge, I also found myself thinking about the TV show Once Upon a Time and some of the biggest complaints that I’ve always had about that show despite the fact that I actually really like the show as I was reading The Bourbon Kings. The biggest problem that I’ve always had with Once Upon a Time is definitely the fact that Edward Kitsis and Adam Horrowitz have a bad habit of repeatedly adding new recurring characters and series regulars to the cast, often putting already established cast members on the sidelines while they focus on the new character or characters for a while. After some time has passed, they’ll usually introduce yet another new character or several new characters and do the same thing all over again. As far as I’m concerned, they’re like children who have been given a new toy. Like children, they’ll play with that new toy a lot (feature the new character or characters on the show quite a bit), get bored with it, or get yet another new toy and do the same thing all over again instead of just using and appreciating the toys (cast members) they already have.

This is an issue that I’ve had with Once Upon a Time ever since the first season ended, and unfortunately Kitsis and Horrowitz definitely haven’t broken that habit yet, despite the fact that the show’s fifth season will be starting in a few weeks. I remember being pretty annoyed when they not only promoted several recurring guest-stars from the first season to series regular status for season two, they also added Colin O’Donoghue to the cast as Hook, and then quickly made his a series regular too, before his first episode even aired. However, to be fair, Hook has ended up becoming one of my favorite characters on the show, and his relationship with Emma has become one of my favorite things about the show, but I digress. Fortunately, Ward had finished introducing all of the main characters and relatively important minor characters by what I’d say was about the halfway point of the book instead of repeatedly adding more and more new characters right up until the very last page of the book. However, if a bunch of new characters are introduced in the second book while numerous characters continue to be underdeveloped, I’m seriously going to wonder if Edward Kitsis and Adam Horrowitz are ghostwriting the Bradford Family book series.

Lane, Edward and Gin apparently have a brother named Max. He’s mentioned at one point in the book, but he’s never actually introduced in the book. Honestly, I’d completely forgotten about Max until I was skimming through the reviews for the book on Amazon. I feel like the fact that Max is mentioned at one point in the book, and then the acknowledgement of Max’s existence is seemingly dropped from the book to the point where apparently some of the people who have posted reviews for the book on Amazon had completely forgotten about Max like I did is a pretty good indicator that there are too many characters in this book for the reader to keep track of. However, I’m wondering if Ward is planning to introduce Max in a future book in the series.

Being a big fan of soap operas, one of the things that I personally feel is very important for all soap operas to have is some characters that the audience loves to hate. That being said, I honestly feel like this book is rather lacking in that department. Pretty much all of the characters in the book all felt very black and white to me. They were both a good person that’s pretty likable and the kind of character that you could root for, or they were just straight-up bad. For example, the patriarch of the family, William Baldwine, is pure evil with absolutely no redeeming qualities. Personally, I think that Chantal (A woman that Lane married after she got pregnant with his baby) could have possibly been the kind of character that readers could love to hate if she had been written just a little bit differently. However, she just ended up being a bit of a crazy psycho and an opportunistic gold-digger that I thought was incredibly unlikable.

At the risk of possibly starting an argument about being pro-life or pro-choice when it comes to the subject of abortion, I’d like to just go ahead and say that I’m pro-life. That being said, I understand that sometimes unplanned pregnancies happen and that for one reason or another, a woman might not want to be a parent, or they might not be in a situation where they could provide a good and stable life for a child. However, I personally think that women should give birth to the child and give it up for adoption since there are so many people in the world who want to be parents, but for any variety of reasons they might not be able to have biological children of their own, or perhaps they’re single, but they want to be a parent. While I’m against abortion for the most part, I’m aware that there might be situations where the mother’s life is at risk for one reason or another if she were to carry the baby to term, and as much as I might be against the idea of abortion, I might be able to understand a woman deciding to terminate the pregnancy in that kind of situation.

That being said, there’s a part of me that can understand why Chantal got an abortion since she felt like Lane had pretty much abandoned her, despite the fact that he had married her, which was essentially a marriage in name only. What I think was wrong and messed up of Chantal to do when it came to that situation is the fact that she lied to him and told him that she had a miscarriage instead of just being honest with Lane in the first place. Based on what Lane said to Chantal when he confronted her about the fact that he had discovered that she had lied to him and had an abortion, it’s pretty clear that Lane is pro-life.

One part of the book that I thought was especially weird, and in my opinion was at least somewhat poorly written, was the part where Edward and Sutton had sex with each other. That being said, I’ll give Ward credit for establishing the details regarding the fact that Edward has sex with prostitutes on a regular basis earlier in the book. Prior to Edward and Sutton having sex with each other, it was established that Edward requests that the prostitutes that he has sex with look and dress a very specific way, because he obviously wants to imagine that he’s having sex with Sutton when he’s having sex with the prostitutes that he pays to have sex with. Plus, it’s also established that Edward was pretty out of it due to the pills that he had taken in order to have sex with the prostitute that he had been expecting.

What makes that part seem so weird to me in retrospect is the way Sutton acted in that particular situation. It just seems rather ridiculous and contrived that she was willing to just walk into Edward’s place and have sex with Edward without asking him point-blank what the hell he’s talking about and what he’s doing when he was trying to have sex with her. However, I’m guessing that if Sutton had done or said something, it would probably have caused Edward to come out of his drug induced haze and realize that he was actually talking to Sutton and having sex with her instead of the prostitute that he had been expecting. Plus, I’m guessing that Ward was expecting the reader to not question how the whole thing played out and just go along with it. Sutton’s confusion about the whole thing afterwards definitely caused a little bit of drama between her and Edward, which was kind of interesting. I definitely think that Ward could have done more with that particular incident between Edward and Sutton though, especially in terms of them dealing with the aftermath of them having sex with each other. Regardless of what Ward’s thought process was when she wrote that part of the book, I found the whole thing incredibly ridiculous and contrived.

The way the narration for the part of the book where Shelby Landis is introduced and Edward hires her to work on the family’s ranch ended, I was really expecting Edward and Shelby to hook up and for a Sutton/Edward/Shelby love triangle to develop. However, Shelby is only featured one or two more times after that before Ward pretty much only focused on the relationship between Edward and Sutton until the towards the very end of the book when Shelby finds Edward passed out in one of the family’s barns. Due to her experience dealing with her father’s alcoholism, Shelby comes to the conclusion that Edward was suffering from symptoms of withdrawal, so she takes care of him and that particular storyline ends with Shelby wondering why her father would have wanted her to go work for Edward after he (Her father) died. This particular storyline was definitely one of the storylines that I felt was most underdeveloped. I loved the interactions between Edward and Shelby in this book, so I really hope to see a lot more of that particular storyline in the second book in this series.

Another major problem that this book has is that there were quite a few times when the story felt fairly predictable, but there were also times when I was genuinely surprised by what happened in the story. As soon as I got to the part of the book where Gin argues with William about the fact that he wants her to marry a rich man named Richard Pford IV, I immediately thought that it was due to some kind of financial problems that the family must be having, and sure enough, I was right. However, the whole thing with the family’s financial problems ended up having several twists and turns along the way that I definitely didn’t see coming, so I definitely have to give Ward kudos when it comes to the writing for that particular storyline.

The fact that there’s an angst-ridden romance between Gin and Samuel T. was another thing that really helped this book to feel like a soap opera, especially once Gin became engaged to Richard. Maybe other people will disagree with me, but the relationship between Gin and Samuel T. was yet another aspect of the book that was too underdeveloped in my opinion, which is a real shame because I found the relationship between Gin and Samuel T. very interesting. Plus, I was really hoping that Gin would end up interacting with her daughter that (I’m sorry, but I can’t remember her name.) she had when she was a teenager at some point, but sadly she never did. Samuel T. is the father of her daughter, and they had established that she and her daughter have apparently always lived separate lives.

The Bourbon Kings featured a variety of what I would essentially describe as flashbacks, which I liked, because I felt like they really helped with character development. However, the problem that I have with the flashbacks is that Ward didn’t really do anything to indicate that she was transitioning into a flashback or back to the present after a flashback, which made the story a little confusing and hard to follow at times. For the record, I bought the audiobook version of The Bourbon Kings instead of the actual book, so maybe Ward did do something with the font in the actual book to indicate flashbacks. I’m guessing she at least started a new paragraph each time she began or ended a flashback, but I really think that she should have done something to make it a bit more clear to the reader when the flashbacks took place, so people wouldn’t get so confused when they’re reading the book like I did.

Maybe people will disagree with me, but personally I felt like Ward should have made the book a lot campier like soap operas tend to be since so many people, including myself, have compared this book to primetime soap operas like Dallas and Dynasty. While this book definitely felt like a soap opera, it still felt a bit tame compared to both of those shows and most of the primetime soap operas that have aired on TV over the years. Sure, if Ward had made this book a lot campier, it would require the reader to really suspend their disbelief, but that pretty much goes with the territory when it comes to soap operas.

The fact that Ward also made a point of having several of the characters in the book be the family’s employees in addition to the characters that were a part of the Baldwine/Bradford family, namely Lizzie who’s the head horticulturist at Easterly (The Bradford Family Estate) and Miss Aurora Toms who’s the family’s cook has caused quite a few people, including J.R. Ward, to compare this book to Downton Abbey in addition to comparing it to soap operas. I definitely think that’s a perfectly valid comparison, and that comparison is one of the things that I like about this book since I’m a fan of Downton Abbey.

All things considered, I absolutely loved The Bourbon Kings and thought that it was a very fun read despite the fact that it definitely has a lot of problems. While the book has a lot of problems, it’s definitely a great guilty pleasure book. As I’ve already said, this book definitely has too many characters and subplots, and the characters are way too black and white, especially for a book that’s essentially a soap opera. I think a lot of the characters could have really benefitted from having some shades of grey to them, which would definitely help make them more interesting and more compelling. While I really enjoyed the relationship between Gin and Samuel T., it was definitely too underdeveloped in my opinion. The relationship between Edward and Shelby was another relationship that I felt was sadly underdeveloped, but I really enjoyed what we got for that particular storyline. As I said at the beginning of this review, I think it’s safe to say that the fact that Lane and Lizzie got the most character development in this book is because Ward meant for The Bourbon Kings to be Lane’s story despite the fact that it’s definitely an ensemble piece.

While I really enjoyed the soap opera nature of the book, I do wish that it had been a bit more over the top when it comes to the events that took place throughout the book. The book definitely felt like a soap opera, but at the same time it also felt rather tame for a soap opera. Personally, I would have loved for there to have been a catfight or two between some of the women in the book. If there had been a catfight at some point in the book, I think it would have made sense for Lizzie and Chantal to get into a fight. Given how psychotic Chantal proved to be, I wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised if Chantal had accidentally fallen down the stairs during a fight with Lizzie or perhaps Lane, causing her to have a miscarriage if the fight took place after she had revealed that she’s apparently pregnant with William’s baby. If that had happened, she could have accused Lizzie or Lane of trying to kill her or intentionally shoving her down the stairs. Given the fact that Chantal did try to get Lane in trouble with the law by accusing him of assaulting her at one point in the book when William was actually the one who had assaulted her, I think it would have made perfect sense for something like that to have happened in the story.

I’ll definitely read the second book in the series when it’s released. However, I have no idea when that will be. Because of how I would rate the level of enjoyment I got from reading The Bourbon Kings is radically different from how I would rate the quality of the writing, I had a really hard time deciding what I would give this book for a score. In the end, I decided that I’m going to give this book two separate scores: A score based on my overall enjoyment of the book, and a score for how I would rate the quality of the writing.

That being said; the score for my overall enjoyment of the book is 10 out of 10, and the final score for the overall quality of the writing for The Bourbon Kings is 5 out of 10.