REVIEW: The Bourbon Thief by Tiffany Reisz

In The Bourbon Thief by Tiffany Reisz, Billionaire Cooper McQueen loves two things: beautiful women and bourbon. So when he gets the chance to take home a seductive woman named Paris for the night–knowing she’s a bourbon aficionado like himself–he doesn’t think twice. But in his haste to get some time alone with her, Cooper doesn’t realize he’s being played until his million-dollar bottle of Red Thread bourbon disappears along with Paris. When found, she explains that the historical bottle was not his to purchase in the first place as it rightfully belongs to her.

“I’m a Kentucky girl,” she said with a graceful shrug. “And bourbon’s like the truth, you know.”
“How’s that?”
“The first taste burns, but once you get used to it, it’s the only thing you want in your mouth.”

Paris offers to tell Cooper about the mystery of the Red Thread empire and how she relates to it in exchange for the bottle. Soon he is fully immersed in a world of lies, atrocious acts, revenge and unbreakable strength. The most remarkable part is that the fall of the generations-old business began with a teenager, Tamara Maddox, and a supposed curse from over a hundred years ago. And what Tamara faced in her youth, as well as what she felt forced to do, would forever change not just her life, but that of her family and so many others.

“Can we bear being apart?”
No. No, they couldn’t. Who could they love after loving each other? Who could they touch if not each other? They had ruined each other for anyone else. The curse was on them and in them and they must stay together lest they spread the curse to others.

The Bourbon Thief was a breathtakingly captivating tale that spanned generations. Filled with deception, murder, forbidden love and a mystery that took the entire book to unravel, this story absolutely consumed me.

“Fate was what brought them together. Fate was what brought about the end of Red Thread. And fate is just another name for a train that cannot stop until it reaches its final destination.”

I’ll admit I’m a huge fan of Tiffany Reisz’s Original Sinners series. There were so many twists and turns, so many strong characters, and so much emotional entanglement between them all that I couldn’t get enough. And quite honestly, The Bourbon Thief had those same qualities but in a standalone novel instead of being spread out over the course of several installments. The storytelling itself was the most impressive element for me here. Reisz has the ability to spin a tale that utterly grips me and won’t let go. And even though this touched upon controversial subjects that may be difficult for some readers such as murder, incest, rape, interracial relationships, and slavery, it was done in a manner that didn’t seem like it was sensationalizing the story. The taboo topics were what made this family saga fascinating and real.

The bulk of this book revolved around Tamara Maddox and the choices she made. But we found out her actions were in response to her existing family at the time and the history she learned about the Maddoxes, going back over a few generations in Kentucky. There were so many layers to her tale of revenge that I wasn’t completely sure what the truth was until the very end. There were revelations that made me literally gasp, moments that made me want to shed a tear, and scenes that had me laughing. Some of the conversations between Tamara and Levi alone were enough to make me chuckle. Through it all though, I felt invested in the characters and wanted to see the connection they each had to one another and where it would take us by the ending.

This was storytelling at its finest. A sweeping family drama that began in the mid-1800s and carried forward to the present day, The Bourbon Thief took me on a journey I never expected. But I can say that I loved every single moment of it.

Book Info:

Publication:  June 28th 2016 | by MIRA |

From the internationally celebrated author of the Original Sinners series comes a brand-new tale of betrayal, revenge and a family scandal that bore a 150-year-old mystery

When Cooper McQueen wakes up from a night with a beautiful stranger, it’s to discover he’s been robbed. The only item stolen—a million-dollar bottle of bourbon. The thief, a mysterious woman named Paris, claims the bottle is rightfully hers. After all, the label itself says it’s property of the Maddox family who owned and operated Red Thread Bourbon distillery since the last days of the Civil War until the company went out of business for reasons no one knows… No one except Paris.

In the small hours of a Louisville morning, Paris unspools the lurid tale of Tamara Maddox, heiress to the distillery that became an empire. But the family tree is rooted in tainted soil and has borne rotten fruit. Theirs is a legacy of wealth and power, but also of lies, secrets and sins of omission. The Maddoxes have bourbon in their blood—and blood in their bourbon. Why Paris wants the bottle of Red Thread remains a secret until the truth of her identity is at last revealed, and the century-old vengeance Tamara vowed against her family can finally be completed.