43 pages • 1-hour read
A Love Letter to Whiskey
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Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, rape, emotional abuse, addiction, and substance use.
Learning to Accept Love
From the very beginning of the novel, B describes Jamie as an illicit substance that she shouldn’t have and herself as someone with an addiction who can’t control herself around him. The metaphor suggests the intensity of her feelings and the destructive ways in which they sometimes manifest. However, there is a deeper significance to the metaphor that only becomes apparent toward the novel’s conclusion: B frames her feelings as dangerous because she sees love itself as dangerous. To secure her happy ending, B therefore needs to rethink her approach not only to Jamie but also to the very concept of love.
In her very first description of Jamie, B compares Jamie to whiskey and calls herself “the alcoholic, pretending like [she] d[oes]n’t want to taste him, realizing too quickly that months of being clean didn’t make [her] crave him any less” (7). Likewise, when she first meets Jamie, her language suggests an immediate “addiction” to him: “I was drunk from the very first sip, and I guess that should have been my sign to stay away” (8). Even as Jamie and B forge a friendship that offers her genuine support (e.g., in her complex feelings about her parents), B continues to think of Jamie as someone who is inherently bad for her. Chapter titles throughout the novel frame B’s journey with Jamie as that of someone continually recovering from addiction only to relapse once again. The implication throughout is that B needs to learn to resist her “cravings” for Jamie.
To be sure, Jamie and B’s relationship slides into toxicity at times; they cheat on their respective partners, exhibit extreme jealousy, and more. This toxicity, however, stems not from their feelings themselves but rather from their attempts to avoid those feelings. In this sense, B’s perception of Jamie as someone who cannot be good for her, whose “love is poisoning” her (273), thus becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Ultimately, B’s beliefs about her relationship with Jamie are rooted in trauma: Her parents’ relationship was violent, so she fears that love is inherently destructive. This is something that Jenna calls attention to when B claims that Jamie is “poisoning” her and that their relationship is “built on lust and bad decisions” (283). Afterward, B begins to frame her relationship with Jamie not as addiction but as love, indicating her newfound willingness to engage with the relationship’s both positive and negative aspects and thus laying the groundwork for a stronger relationship going forward.
The Influence of Timing
Like many romance novels, A Love Letter to Whiskey uses missed opportunities and poor timing to generate suspense. Aside from the first few seconds of their acquaintance, B and Jamie are always in relationships with or attracted to other people, creating obstacles to their own love. However, the novel also subverts this convention: B may believe that she and Jamie are fated to be apart, but this is ultimately a self-serving justification for fear and inaction.
The extended timeframe of the novel underscores this latter point. The novel spans more than a decade, and Steiner highlights the distinct phases of B’s life, contrasting her naive high school years, her self-reflection during her grief for her father, and her confidence as she enters the workforce. Regardless of what is going on in her life, however, B insists that the timing is never right for her and Jamie. Indeed, when she finally realizes that she could be with Jamie if she wanted to, B makes a point of repeating the line, “My dad died on the day I realized I loved Jamie Shaw” (134). This implies that there is something inherently wrong with the timing of her and Jamie’s relationship, and she uses this as an excuse to push Jamie away.
Jamie himself calls attention to this point when B turns him down to focus on her career:
[N]ow, you’re telling me it’s still not there—it’s still not the right time. You couldn’t be with me when you were broken, and now that you’re standing on your own, you still can’t be with me. So if I can’t have you at your worst, and I can’t have you at your best, then when do I get you, B? When does the timing line up for you to stop fighting what we have between us and just let me in? (179).
There are several instances of poor timing in the novel, including B’s arrival in Florida immediately following Jamie’s engagement and the invitation to B’s wedding that reaches Jamie on the precise day his divorce goes through. Nevertheless, the novel ultimately validates Jamie’s basic argument, suggesting that B is not simply at the mercy of circumstances beyond her control. She herself comes to understand this, observing, “We’ve always blamed timing, but the timing has always been right—we just never listened” (284). Far from keeping her and Jamie apart, the world has brought them back together again and again; B simply ignored these serendipitous opportunities.
The Importance of Accountability
While blaming timing and “addiction,” B often makes detrimental choices that sabotage her own happiness. She thinks that she has no choice in the course her life takes, yet this is rarely the case. Ultimately, the novel stresses the importance of taking responsibility for one’s actions.
B struggles with choice and agency from the beginning of the novel; she describes herself as indecisive and uncertain about what her future should look like. Circumstances exacerbate this tendency. The choices that B faces are often difficult, as when she must decide whether to break up with Elijah so that she can be with Jamie. B often knows the right choice to make, as evidenced by the fact that she instantly knows that she needs to be with Jamie when Jenna makes her decide between the two men in Chapter 10. Nevertheless, B often goes with what is easiest, as when she pushes Jamie away after her father’s death rather than reevaluating and reconfiguring their relationship while she is grieving. Moreover, there are times when B makes detrimental choices when she doesn’t have to choose at all. This is the case when she chooses to cut Jamie out of her life so that she can have a successful career, not recognizing that this does not require sacrificing a relationship.
It takes time for B to realize that both kinds of poor decision-making are methods of self-sabotage (indeed, it takes time for her to recognize that she is making decisions at all). Jenna is ultimately able to show B how “the only thing keeping [B and Jamie] from being together is [B]” (187). B internalizes this by the final chapters, when she tells Jamie, “I know I’ve put you, as a reader, through a lot. Maybe through too much. I wouldn’t blame you if you hated me right now, because the truth is there are more than a few times in my life where I made the wrong decision” (284). Though Jamie is the in-text “reader,” B’s word choice here is significant; by addressing readers directly, she underscores the importance of the lesson she has learned about accepting responsibility for her choices.
Finally accepting accountability for her mistakes in the relationship is the most critical change that B’s character undergoes, as it is what finally allows her and Jamie to be together. B continues to take accountability in the Epilogue, jokingly describing all of Jamie’s new wife’s flaws and thus showing her ability to acknowledge her failings.
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