Review – A Love Letter to Whiskey by Kandi Steiner

“Love is the most powerful and real emotion we feel, and I think it’s sort of magical that we can experience some of the greatest loves of all time through books.” B, A Love Letter To Whiskey <- THIS! SO MUCH THIS!

It’s taken me 7 hours to read ALLTW, taking three breaks where I had to put down the book because the emotion ran so deep, so strong. During those 3 breaks I found myself ugly crying, taking in big, deep breaths and holding my heart in place, because this book RIPPED ME APART! Kandi yanked out my heart, squeezed it, trampled on my soul and then burnt it. To ash! Sounds awful right? WRONG! That burning, trampled soul is now singing, bathing in the pain it endured and loving it!

From the moment I started reading I too succumbed to the devastating effects of Whiskey and found myself so addicted I COULD NOT let go. From beginning to end I have been launched into one of the fiercest, intense, passionate reading roller coaster rides of my life, climbing the beautiful high, before pummelling into devastation and despair, flying through breathtaking twist and turns, mind numbing speeds and jolting bumps. But you know what the best thing about an all consuming roller coaster is?

When you reach the end, all you want to do is ride it again….

And now all I want to do is go right back to the beginning and ride that emotional coaster AGAIN and AGAIN!

B and Whiskey are IT. You know? Just IT! So hard to explain, to fully capture THEM! Like everything that’s wrong about them is actually so right and everything that’s right is kinda wrong. Everything they are is perfection but it’s also devastation.. They are two incredibly raw, intense, souls that have one hell of a connection but time is NEVER on their side. And that HURTS! But it’s a good hurt..honestly, it’s one that you need to savour. It’s a hurt that you need to let knock you off your feet because that burn, that angst, that delicious heartbreak is magic.

What Kandi has done here is pen a book so full of emotion, so full of connection that when I was reading I could hear the characters talking, I could visualise them, in front of me telling me their story. I could FEEL every high and low. I was a part of it, for 7 hours I lived their world as my own.

I thought when Kandi wrote Weightless that her writing was amazing but in this book, Kandi’s writing is other wordly. It’s OUTSTANDING.

I hope people GET this book. I hope people read it and fully understand this book, I hope they get B and her mentality, I hope they get her addiction. I hope they understand Jamie, his magnetism and just how AMAZING he is. Yes it’s gritty, raw, intense and at times all you may want to do is scream but it’s also REAL, BEAUTIFUL, BREATHTAKING.

Oh and Kandi, the epilogue. One of the best epilogues I’ve ever read! Despite the fact that I cried like a baby AGAIN!

I read A LOT of books. I’ve read well over the 100 this year so far, and while books touch me and resonate, very few books actually play out my own personal experiences. However when reading this book, reading the story of B and Whiskey, hit so deep that I got the strangest sense of deja vu, because I have a Whiskey, in fact if people are honest, they’ll have a Whiskey too. So ALLTW sits as one of those books that immediately changed me. It’s one of those books that will leave an imprint so large that, I’ll feel the after effects of it FOREVER.

It’s crazy how fast the buzz comes back after you’ve been sober for so long.
Whiskey stood there, on my doorstep, just like he had one year before. Except this time, there was no rain, no anger, no wedding invitation — it was just us.

It was just him — the old friend, the easy smile, the twisted solace wrapped in a glittering bottle.

It was just me — the alcoholic, pretending like I didn’t want to taste him, realizing too quickly that months of being clean didn’t make me crave him any less.

But we can’t start here.

No, to tell this story right, we need to go back.

Back to the beginning.

Back to the very first drop.

This is my love letter to Whiskey. I only hope he reads it.