Bastards & Whiskey (Top Shelf, #1)

by Alta Hensley

[Eve1972]

I adore the cover of this one. A fabulous representation of the story. Great use of graphics. Excellent composition and eye-catching title work. A fantastic cover for an excellent book.

Sometimes when I finish a book all I really want to write is "I LOVED IT" or "IT WAS REALLY GOOD" and leave it at that. Alas, since I was graciously given an advance copy I will try to put into words how utterly enjoyable I found this one to be...

This book pretty much checked every mark for me. It was well written and well paced. I adored the setting and plot. Not just for this book but the potential for future books in the series is wide open. A bunch of rich assholes owning a gentlemen's club where money can pretty much buy you anything. We are talking CEOs, Princes, Mafia members, Assassins, and more. I was intrigued by SO many of these guys and their kinks. I'd like to request a book for every single one. I'd also like to see more about the few female side characters and of course Tennessee.



The blurb makes this one sound a bit like it would be an Intsa-love book and in a way it is, and it isn't. I would say it was more of intrigued at first sight than anything. There is a lot of push/pull with the hero pretty much right until the end when he does an about face that was a TINY bit too whiplash for me to buy into. I wouldn't say this had any OW/OM drama in the traditional sense, but it wouldn't fall into the "safe" category either. The sex scenes were hot and relatively plentiful.



Both main characters were pretty likable. The hero is a huge asshole, and I seriously wanted to throttle him on more than one occasion. But that is kind of who these guys are. Rich, arrogant dicks who no one ever says NO to. By the finish of the book, I ended up liking Kenneth even more than I did the heroine. Anita was a bit of a mixed bag for me. At the beginning I liked her. She was strong and feisty with a heart of gold. Then she made an (IMO) too stupid to live decision and turned into a bit of a bratty idiot. Nevertheless, by the end, she owned up to her mistakes and took the blame for her bad decision. So that placed her was back in my good graces.

Lastly, this was all wrapped up in a pretty decent ending. I assume since there are more books planned that we will see how this couple is doing in those. Apparently, I had much more to say than I anticipated. *lol* In any case, this one gets two HUGE thumbs up from yours truly. Now I try and wait not so patiently for the next book in the series.