“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.”
The Bourbon Thief is a story in a story. A woman entrances a man and after inviting her home finds she is only there to steal an old bottle of bourbon that he has in his collection. It’s the original bottle of Red Thread. She promises to tell him the story of why the Red Thread company building burned down and disappeared if he’ll then give it to her. They settle in for a long night and the story begins.
I saw this book in Bookpages and added it to my to-read list. I bought it when I saw it on sale through Bookbub’s daily ebook deals email. I read it in June as part of my monthly reading list as my fiction book. I found it to be a very captivating story.
On Tamara Maddox’s 16th birthday, she finally got a kiss from the stable boy she had a crush on, had her mother walk in on them and then found out her grandfather would do anything to get a male heir for the family bourbon business, Red Thread. In desperation, she kills her grandfather when floodwaters rise that night; however, her mother will hold the trust to the business until Tamara is 21 or married.
Tamara tracks down Levi, the stable boy, and proposes they get married so she can stop her mother from selling Red Thread. He agrees and even though they don’t plan to, they fall in love. As they learn more about the history of Red Thread, they learn more about their own histories, which are more intertwined than they thought. (Red Thread is named after a red thread a slave wore in her hair and left behind when her master’s wife sold her after the master had fallen in love with her. The master started Red Thread bourbon and tied a red thread around each bottle.) Can they overcome the past that haunts Red Thread and find a future together?
The story ends back with the man and woman discussing how Levi and Tamara ended up and she is given the original bottle of Red Thread. Her own history is tied to the Red Thread as well.
This was a very interesting story that kept me guessing until the very end how it was all going to end. I would recommend it to anyone looking for a good fiction book; however, it does deal with slavery, racism, incest, rape and adult scenes.
Have you read The Bourbon Thief? Did you enjoy the story?