The Angels' Share
The Bourbon Kings - Book 2
By J.R. Ward.
Publisher: NAL
Release Date: July 26, 2016
In Charlemont, Kentucky, the Bradford family is the crème de la crème of high society—just like their exclusive brand of bourbon. And their complicated lives and vast estate are run by a discrete staff who inevitably become embroiled in their affairs. This is especially true now, when the apparent suicide of the family patriarch is starting to look more and more like murder…
No one is above suspicion—especially the eldest Bradford son, Edward. The bad blood between him and his father is known far and wide, and he is aware that he could be named a suspect. As the investigation into the death intensifies, he keeps himself busy at the bottom of a bottle—as well as with his former horse trainer’s daughter. Meanwhile, the family’s financial future lies in the perfectly manicured hands of a business rival, a woman who wants Edward all to herself.
Everything has consequences; everybody has secrets. And few can be trusted. Then, at the very brink of the family’s demise, someone thought lost to them forever returns to the fold. Maxwell Bradford has come home. But is he a savior...or the worst of all the sinners?
The Angels' Share, second in Ward's The Bourbon Kings series picks up where last year's first book,
The Bourbon Kings ended. The Bradford family struggles to come to terms with their dire financial situation. The suicide that has them all reeling - though not mourning - might not be a suicide after all. Siblings Lane, Gin, and Edward all react differently to the news of what their father has done and how it impacts each of them while fourth sibling, Maxwell continues to be MIA. New characters are introduced into the mix and their actions will add more layers of complexity to the already fraught situation. A beloved member of the Bradford household staff faces a dire health prognosis while the Bradford matriarch's actions leave me wondering if her health is really as delicate as we are led to believe. Lane and Lizzie continue to strengthen their relationship in the face of daunting obstacles and I continue to cheer them on. Bradford daughter, Gin makes a decision that could put her life at risk and, surprisingly, shows glimpses of humanity that may eventually bring me around to her side. Believe me, Gin takes "flawed" to new heights. Missing son, Maxwell returns in this book but doesn't have enough page time for me to form an opinion yet though hints are dropped that indicate he will most likely be just as complex as the rest of the family. I'm sure we'll be learning more about him in the next book. Eldest son, Edward continues to be the character who intrigues me the most. My heart breaks for what he has been through and though the end of
The Angels' Share leads readers to believe something about Edward, I'm of a different opinion. I'm already looking forward to the next book to find out if my suspicions are correct.
Two things you should know before investing your time in this series:
1) This is an ongoing family saga. While romantic relationships ebb and flow, the books in this series are not what I would term as traditional romance. There are love stories and, hopefully, there will be multiple happy endings over the course of the series but you should be aware that each book does not focus on a different primary couple with a definite happy ending for that couple.
2) If you enjoy well-crafted, sweeping sagas with a large cast of multi-layered characters, complex relationships, an ongoing mystery, and plenty of lust, betrayal, deceit, and, yes, love, then I suggest you give this series a try.
I have always enjoyed family sagas and both
The Bourbon Kings and
The Angels' Share sit firmly on my "recommended read" list. Ward has done an outstanding job of bringing the Bradfords and those around them to life. I love the flawed, realistic characters, the dysfunctional family dynamics, the struggle to save the family business from certain ruin and rebuild both their fortunes and tarnished social status, the cross-class romance, the murder mystery, and the suspicions hanging over all of their heads.
With
The Bourbon Kings and
The Angels' Share, Ward has tapped into the guilty pleasure that TV series Dynasty and Dallas brought me in the 80's and I am fully on board with this new series. It's a deliciously addictive saga that has sucked me in and refuses to let go.
~PJ
Excerpt from THE
ANGELS’ SHARE by J. R. Ward
Toyota trucks were not supposed to go seventy-five
miles an hour. Especially when they were ten years old.
At least the driver was wide awake, even though it was four
a.m.
Lizzie King had a death grip on the steering wheel, and her
foot on the accelerator was actually catching floor as she headed for a rise in
the highway.
She had woken up in her bed at her farmhouse alone.
Ordinarily, that would have been the status quo, but not anymore, not now that
Lane was back in her life. The wealthy playboy and the estate’s gardener had
finally gotten their act together, love bonding two unlikelies closer and
stronger than the molecules of a diamond.
And she was going to stand by him, no matter what the
future held.
After all, it was so much easier to give up extraordinary
wealth when you had never known it, never aspired to it—and especially when you
had seen behind its glittering curtain to the sad, desolate desert on the far
side of the glamour and prestige.
God, the stress Lane was under.
And so out of bed she had gotten. Down the creaking stairs
she had gone. And all around her little house’s first floor she had wandered.
When Lizzie had looked outside, she’d discovered his car
was missing, the Porsche he drove and parked beside the maple by her front
porch nowhere to be seen. And as she had wondered why he had left without
telling her, she had begun to worry.
Just a matter of nights since his father had killed
himself, only a matter of days since William Baldwine’s body had been found on
the far side of the Falls of the Ohio. And ever since then Lane’s face had had
a faraway look, his mind churning always with the missing money, the divorce
papers he had served on the rapacious Chantal, the status of the household bills,
the precarious situation at the Bradford Bourbon Company, his brother Edward’s
terrible physical condition, Miss Aurora’s illness.
But he hadn’t said a thing about any of it. His insomnia
had been the only sign of the pressure, and that was what scared her. Lane
always made an effort to be composed around her, asking her about her work in
Easterly’s gardens, rubbing her bad shoulder, making her dinner, usually badly,
but who cared. Ever since they had gotten the air cleared between them and had
fully recommitted to their relationship, he had all but moved into her
farmhouse—and as much as she loved having him with her, she had been waiting
for the implosion to occur.
It would almost have been easier if he had been ranting and
raving.
And now she feared that time had come—and some sixth sense
made her terrified about where he had gone. Easterly, the Bradford Family
Estate, was the first place she thought of. Or maybe the Old Site, where his
family’s bourbon was still made and stored. Or perhaps Miss Aurora’s Baptist
church?
Yes, Lizzie had tried him on his phone. And when the thing
had rung on the table on his side of the bed, she hadn’t waited any longer
after that. Clothes on. Keys in hand. Out to the truck.
No one else was on I-64 as she headed for the bridge to get
across the river, and she kept the gas on even as she crested the hill and hit
the decline to the river’s edge on the Indiana side. In response, her old truck
picked up even more speed along with a death rattle that shook the wheel and
the seat, but the damn Toyota was going to hold it together because she needed it to.
“Lane . . . where are you?”
God, all the times she had asked him how he was and he’d
said, “Fine.” All those opportunities to talk that he hadn’t taken her up on.
All the glances she’d shot him when he hadn’t been looking her way, all the
time her monitoring for signs of cracking or strain. And yet there had been
little to no emotion after that one moment they’d had together in the garden,
that private, sacred moment when she had sought him out under the blooms of the
fruit trees and told him that she’d gotten it wrong about him, that she had
misjudged him, that she was prepared to make a pledge to him with the only
thing she had: the deed to her farmhouse—which was exactly the kind of asset
that could be sold to help pay for the lawyers’ fees as he fought to save his
family.
Lane had held her, and told her he loved her—and refused
her gift, explaining he was going to fix everything himself, that he was going
to somehow find the stolen money, pay back the enormous debt, right the
company, resurrect his family’s fortunes.
And she had believed him.
She still did.
But ever since then? He had been both as warm and closed
off as a space heater, physically present and completely disengaged at the same
time.
Lizzie did not blame him in the slightest.
It was strangely terrifying, however.
Off in the distance, across the river, Charlemont’s
business district glowed and twinkled, a false, earthbound galaxy that was a
lovely lie, and the bridge that connected the two shores was still lit up in
spring green and bright pink for Derby, a preppy rainbow to that promised land.
The good news was that there was no traffic, so as soon as Lizzie was on the
other side, she could take the River Road exit off the highway, shoot north to
Easterly’s hill, and see if his car was parked in front of the mansion.
Then she didn’t know what she was going to do.
The newly constructed bridge had three lanes going in both
directions, the concrete median separating east from west tall and broad for
safety purposes. There were rows of white lights down the middle, and
everything was shiny, not just from the illumination, but a lack of exposure to
the elements. Construction had only finished in March, and the first lines of
traffic had made the crossing in early April, cutting rush-hour delays down—
Up ahead, parked in what was actually the “slow” lane, was
a vehicle that her brain recognized before her eyes properly focused on it.
Lane’s Porsche. It was Lane’s—
Lizzie nailed the brake pedal harder than she’d been
pounding the accelerator, and the truck made the transition from full-force
forward to full-on stop with the grace of a sofa falling out a second-story
window: Everything shuddered and shook, on the verge of structural
disintegration, and worse, there was barely any change in velocity, as if her
Toyota had worked too hard to gain the speed and wasn’t going to let the
momentum go without a fight—
There was a figure on the edge of the bridge. On the very
farthest edge of the bridge. On the lip of the bridge over the deadly drop.
“Lane,” she screamed. “Lane!”
Her truck went into a spin, pirouetting such that she had
to wrench her head around to keep him in her sights. And she jumped out before
the Toyota came to a full stop, leaving the gearshift in neutral, the engine
running, the door open in her wake.
“Lane! No! Lane!”
Lizzie pounded across the pavement and surmounted barriers
that seemed flimsy, too flimsy, given the distance down to the river.
Lane jerked his head around—
And lost one hold of the rail behind him.
As his grip slipped, shock registered on his face, a flash
of surprise . . . that was immediately replaced by horror.
When he fell off into nothing but air.
Lizzie’s mouth could not open wide enough to release her
scream.
Posted
by arrangement with New American Library, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC,
A Penguin Random House Company. Copyright © J.R. Ward, 2016.
