The Whirlwind is not a metaphor.

Whirlwind
by Alison Hart
Release Date: May 25, 2010
Sequel to Shadow Horse.

When thirteen-year-old Jas Schuler found her beloved mare, Whirlwind, dead in her paddock, she thought her heart would break. Now Jas knows the truth.

Whirlwind is alive.

Wealthy horse breeder Hugh Robicheaux faked the mare's death, collected insurance money on her life, then sold her to an unsuspecting buyer. And he's going to get away with his scheme, too. Unless someone can find Whirlwind. And that's exactly what Jas plans to do.

But hunting for Whirlwind is dangerous. Hugh has threatened to destroy everything Jas holds dear unless she stops her search. As she struggles with her desire to find Whirlwind without letting the people she loves get hurt, Jas must ask herself: Is all this worth risking for a horse she may never find?

I have heard repeatedly about the amazing Shadow Horse, Alison Hart's award nominated horsey mystery. For some reason, I never got around to reading it, even when I knew Whirlwind was right around the corner. After reading this, I'm making Shadow Horse a priority.

Because Whirlwind is pretty awesome.

Two months after the beginning of Shadow Horse, Jas is nearing the end of what is essentially court ordered house arrest. She's pretty obsessed with the idea that Whirlwind might still be alive, and so is the insurance company that Hugh Robicheaux has a history of scamming. Hugh, however, has no intention of being brought down, because people like him "always win." People like Jas have ankle monitors and live in mobile homes, like they're supposed to. Lucky for Jas, she's not about to accept anything that Hugh says, and uses just about every resource around her to marshal interest in finding Whirlwind.

Enter the insurance agency's investigator, M. Baylor. All of a sudden finding Whirlwind stops looking like a crapshoot and more of an actual possibility. Hugh knows it, too, and starts to threaten not only Jas, but Second Chance Farm. Hugh also knows more than he should, leading Jas to suspect there's a spy in their midst, but at a charity case rescue like Second Chance Farm, who could be feeding information to a man they all loathe?

There's illegal search and seizure, sexual tension, and murder.

There's even a hurricane.

It's awesome like that.

What I like about Whirlwind is that it's not just a horse book and it's not just a horse mystery. It's a young adult novel about a girl who's going through a lot, as well as trying to grow up. She's a barely fourteen-year-old kid taking care of her elderly grandfather, navigating a possible romance, and trying to take down the most influential man in town. It sounds like a lot for one girl and a rescue farm to tackle, but it's done with a gritty realism that had me immediately addicted.

Jas isn't a spoiled brat with horse ownership on the brain. She's human. She gets prickly and lashes out (usually at Chase, the boy she's in teenage love with, which never fails to amuse me), and she recognizes the need to apologize (usually to Chase, as it turns out) in order to remain a likable horse girl. And while she mostly lands in serious main character territory, she knows how to apply some humor into her life. She's also (dare I say it?) proactive. Nothing just randomly turns out in Jas's favor that she doesn't work hard for, something I think we can all appreciate.

Plus, she doesn't like Twilight. I mean, that alone is enough.

While this book does have a beautiful and satisfying ending, it leaves plenty of undeveloped plot for another sequel. I'll go ahead and say that I'm expecting this to be a second book in a trilogy. It may take another ten years to see it, but the potential is definitely there. In the meantime, Whirlwind is strong enough to stand on its own.

Overall: Totally worth your money. Go buy it.

A Horse Called Hustle is not called Hustle

A Horse Called Hustle by CJ Love 2009

Jessa Wilder's grandfather has one small desire: to win back the horse that was stolen from him in a poker game by that stack-the-deck, horse-pinching card sharp Cole Hannible. Jessa is not above fleecing the average man in a game of poker. That's why she's the Seven-Card Stud Shootout Champion of the Southeast. But Cole Hannible isn't your average man, and even though Jessa bluffs him for a while, he's got an ace up his sleeve called revenge. Jessa Wilder will never get her hands on his Triple Crown winner, A Horse Called Hustle. He's made sure of it...and it could cost them both their hearts.

In case you were wondering, the horse isn't called Hustle. The horse is called A Horse Called Hustle. Think how fantastic our lives would be if we named things this way? Somehow, I think redundancy would be the least of our problems. Anyway, Jessa (or The Girl They Call Jessica, But She Prefers Jessa), has arrived in Ocala. Or somewhere around in there. Due to some extreme planning of heights never reached before by man, she arrives at a gas station, where Cole (or The Dastardly but Beautiful Man Named Cole) has been working on his truck. She accidentally honks the horn, and he just happens to wander over to make her look like a moron, and incidentally notices she's leaking oil all over the place. She refuses his help, drives off, finds him later on the road with his broken down truck, and offers to drive him to this 4,500 acre thoroughbred farm. So the plan to get Cole to lose his Triple Crown winner via poker is well under way. Right around here I suspected this story was going to turn to hilarity. It started when Cole picks up a rifle and jumps into Jessa's Porsche, which then promptly breaks down as a hurricane whirls up and leaves them deserted on some Florida highway. Jessa then reveals her cat named Stanley, who follows them determinedly through the woods as they attempt to walk through the hurricane on their way to Cole's farm. They don't make it, and stumble into an abandoned barn, where they decide to pass the time by playing poker, all in hopes that Jessa will somehow get Cole to bet his Triple Crown winner, A Horse Called Hustle. That doesn't exactly happen, but she does get him to bet a "horse of her choice," and this is written out all nice and legal on a Taco Bell napkin. So, to recap, this ploy to get Cole to lose his famous horse to her in a poker game included: 1. Strategically out of gas Porsche 2. Ignorance involving how to pump gas 3. The wild hope that Cole will happen to be at this gas station at this precise time 4. Sabotaging Cole's truck so it will break down 5. Cutting the Porsche's oil line so that it will break down after she has managed to pick up Cole 6. A HURRICANE The hurricane passes, so Cole, Jessa and Stanley the cat go on their merry way. They run into the angriest cow on the face of the earth, cross a river by jumping through trees (with a house cat, mind you) and randomly wind up back at the cars. Someone picks them up and says, "Oh, hey, that's The Girl They Call Jessica, But She Prefers Jessa WILDER. You know, the granddaughter of the guy you hate who wants your horse?" And Cole gets all upset and refuses to speak to Jessa, even after she sends him twenty steaks and balloons and Hallmark cards and essentially decides that she'd rather not screw around with him and his horse. Of course, he does not tell her he hates her to her face, he sends her a telegram. Apparently Cole does not believe in pretty and insulting greeting cards. And then the real fun starts. Cole and Jessa's grandfather, That Guy Named Pappy or Poppy or Somebody, "hate" each other. And they take this hatred out on each other through ridiculous pranks that seem to have some meaning, but I failed to really care. The important thing here is that Jessa is on Cole's To Prank list. This inevitably involves a "haunted house" and the reenactment of what I recognized to be my life as a college student. Eventually Jessa and Cole find themselves lost in Florida again, restlessly searching for a BP that never appears. The pranks continue continuing. Cole outbids Jessa on all those Norwegian Fjords she wanted just to irk her, etc. Then someone lets a bull into the stud barn, scattering stallions in all directions. Cole blames Jessa for this incident, shakes her around because this is romantic and not abusive, and then randomly decides to play poker with Paddy or Pappy or whoever for her hand in marriage or what not. He loses. No one cares. Because the The Girl They Call Jessica, But She Prefers Jessa is more loved than A Horse Called Hustle. I suppose they get married and have many fantastic adventures in the woods of Florida. Just some random quotes: - Slapping him on the back, they congratulated him for surviving the wilds and facing the hurricane like a man. It was a guy moment. - It was all very dramatic as the sun sank lower in the sky and the lamps beneath the oak trees lit automatically. - "We're grown men. By god, you have to be a man to pull some of the stunts we've...they've pulled. And you have to have a driver's license, and know someone who's studied electricity, or at least physics. A lawyer comes in handy once in awhile. We're men, okay?" - Not hungry, Jessa approached the free-sample lady, thinking to pass the time. - "Taco Bell," he said aloud. "I guess it's time to go south of the border." - "Where are you going?" "To stare out the window." As you can see, this book was about two parts hilarious and one part awesome. It has no clue on the horse end of things, but I think I was too entranced by the rest of it to even begin noticing that problem. That said: hour and a half of your time, tops. It's time well spent.

The Georges and the Jewels

The Georges and the Jewels
by Jane Smiley
2009

Abby Lovitt has been riding horses for as long as she can remember, but Daddy hasn't let her name a single one. He calls all their geldings George and their mares Jewel and warns her not to get attached. After all, the horses are there on the ranch to be sold, and if they're not gone in six months, they're just a waste of time and hay.

But with all the stress at school (the Big Four--Linda, Mary A., Mary N., Joan--have turned against her) and home (nothing feels right with her brother, Danny, gone), Abby can't help but seek comfort in the Georges and the Jewels, who greet her every day with pricked ears and soft nickers. Except for one: the horse who won't meet her gaze, the horse who bucks her off every chance he gets, the horse Daddy insists she ride and train. Abby knows not to cross her father, but she knows, too, that she can't get back on Ornery George. And suddenly the horses seem like no refuge at all.

The only other book I've read of Jane Smiley's is Horse Heaven, a megalithic opus that I have a vague memory of liking despite what I always felt was a muddled and tedious storyline. I had no real expectations with The Georges and the Jewels, only that I desperately wanted it to be good so I could have another YA horse book to put in my steadily growing stack of good YA horse books. It's such a malnourished little pile of books, you guys. It needs a good writer to love and nurture it!

Well, Jane Smiley has a Pulitzer, so I don't think we can get better than this. The Georges and the Jewels is set in 1960s California. Abby helps her father with the family business: buying and selling horses. This feels like it used to be a fairly smooth operation, but Abby's sixteen-year-old brother recently left due to differences with their father, putting all the work on Abby, who is facing down Ornery George, the first horse she's genuinely a little afraid of. Abby's dad is determined to train all of their horses to the point where "a little girl could ride them," and Ornery George is light years from this goal.

Meanwhile, a new girl has arrived in Abby's small seventh grade class, creating drama with the Big Four, a group of girls that rule seventh grade with an iron fist. Abby is a girl who can only be described as nondescript. She keeps her head down and minds her own business, keeping silent when she sees things and ignored when she tries to bring anything up. Stella, the new girl, stirs up trouble without even trying, and drags Abby into it both as a buffer and a scapegoat, all for the attentions of a boy that finds wonder in discussions about bologna sandwiches. Abby just wants to get through seventh grade, keep the one friend she's got, and get a good grade on her Catholic mission model without her born again parents finding out and having a fit.

Oh, and she also wants to figure out Ornery George, who is a long way from help. The book does a nice job with Ornery George. There aren't any quick fixes to be applied to his character, and Abby is not the sole person responsible for his training. She's a good rider, but she's inexperienced and frightened. Not to mention, Ornery George has her number. The descriptions of the training they put George through are nicely done, and I actually followed a lot of it, which means I can give this book bonus points for making sense. Like I said, no wacky sudden revelations will be found here. Ornery George is a slow but steady student, and Abby is an easy kid who is falling into the business of buying and selling horses without really realizing it.

The one qualm I have with the book is what felt like a loose end regarding what happens when Abby's parents find out about the mission models the school is having the kids build. There's a string of religion in the book that abruptly comes to a frayed end, with Abby getting worried about her father Bible thumping one of her teachers as she looks on helplessly. I didn't expect the religion aspect to come to some great enlightened ending here, but there was something about it that felt unfinished.

The rest of it, however, finishes quite nicely.

Homestretch by Paul Volponi

Homestretch

by Paul Volponi

2009

Gaston Giambanco Jr. never figured himself for a runaway. But then again, Gas never figured his mother would be killed in a head-on collision caused by an illegal Mexican. Or that his poor excuse for a father would
actually go too far and beat him. So he hitches a ride out of state without a plan, only to find himself working at a racetrack stable alongside a family of Mexicans--exactly the kind of people his dad always taught him to hate, the kind of people who caused his mother's death.

What will Gas learn about himself, and the true meaning of family? And what will he do when his small stature causes an unscrupulous horse trainer to promise him glory and riches as a jockey, even if he can't ride well?

Review:

Paul Volponi is the namesake of the 2002 Breeders' Cup Classic winner, which you can witness beating out many fine racehorses here if you so desire, and correspondent for The Blood-Horse. I mention this because these qualifications hint at the rarely seen, yet undeniably powerful duo: racing knowledge and ability to comprehend grammar! It is like a balm for my tired soul.

Homestretch is short, sweet, and to the point. Gas lives in southern Texas, a hotbed of illegal alien activity if ever there was one, and his life is changed for the worse when his mother dies in the midst of all this activity. His father goes appropriately crazy, and Gaston suffers the alcoholism and beatings until he decides enough is enough.

This isn't to say that, although he is escaping his father, Gas hasn't picked up on his father's rampant racism. He has, although for the most part he keeps it to himself. Any outward sign that Gas is racist toward the illegals he winds up hitchhiking with is cut down to basic moodiness. The Mexican brothers he finds himself with in the back of a horse trailer probably chalk this up to teenage angst and collectively move on with their lives. Meanwhile, Gas rails to himself about "beaners" and abhores the notion of eating enchiladas and tacos while he mentally envisions his mother's car wreck. The horror!

The trailer drops off the boys at a fictional Arkansas racetrack named Pennington, near Hot Springs, where the very real Oaklawn Park resides. There, the Mexican boys are given jobs as grooms, and Gas is demoted to hotwalker when Dag, the "unscrupulous" trainer, discovers he has no idea what he's doing. Therefore the Mexicans are earning more than Gas, prompting another volley of internal racial angst. Eventually, Gas finds himself exercising the local crazy horse, Bad Boy Rising, and because he manages to hang on during the horse's careening around the track, Dag gets it into his head that Gas would make an excellent bug boy.

Gas is totally inexperienced, and should not be on a racehorse in any way, shape or form. Dag is very well aware of this, and intends to set himself up to win big as a result. If only Gas will play along.

Short, sweet, and to the point. Regarding the race issues this book spends the first hundred or so pages on, I'd say it's a little too short and to the point regarding their resolution. However, I liked the rest of the novel well enough that this didn't really bother me. Plus, it is a horse racing book set in Arkansas that I happened to read while in Arkansas. And the semi-love interest is a student at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, a little detail I apprecate because I am totally easy to please in that way.

Perhaps I am biased? Perhaps not. It's not a bad little book.

Rec: Bug Boy by Eric Luper

Bug Boy
by Eric Luper
2009

It is the summer of 1934, and even at the height of the Great Depression, money is no object for the socialites at posh Saratoga Race Course. The trouble is times are tough for everyone else, especially penniless track workers like fifteenyear- old Jack Walsh. When Jack suddenly graduates from exercise rider to apprentice jockey, or bug boy, he is an overnight sensation. Success brings him all sorts of attention, including that of a brainy blond beauty who is more involved with the gritty underbelly of the track than she lets on and a vicious thug who presses Jack to break his code as a jockey for a payoff that could solve all his family’s problems.

Set amid the rough backstretch of Thoroughbred racing, this edge-of-your-saddle read follows the course of a young athlete whose rise to glory in the most popular sport in America is accompanied by ever-increasing pressure to do something that could leave him trampled in the dirt.

Review:

We all know that I am a sucker for young adult horse fiction. Well, for good young adult horse fiction. My most dorky dream is that Sarah Dessen decides to write about a horse loving girl, and I cling to this dim hope in a slightly obsessive manner. To pass the time, I am on a neverending hunt for good YA horse books, and they are few and far between, my friends.

Yet, for whatever reason, the publishing world decided to sprinkle the market with YA horse fiction this year, taking a quiet breather from all the vampire books hoping to catch a ride on Twilight's super insane comet of crazy. Bug Boy by Eric Luper is one of these books. Set in Saratoga during a time when America was fresh out of Prohibition, but still suffering through the Great Depression, horse racing is at its height of popularity. Jack Walsh, exercise rider, is about to become New York's most celebrated bug boy. Thanks to a tragic accident, Jack is shoved into actually playing out what it means to live your dream. It may or may not be all that he had hoped.

Jack isn't what one might call a natural fit for the job. He's a tad too tall, a tad too heavy, and the ordeal of making weight is daunting, disgusting, and everything you'd expect it to be. The glitz and the glamour of 1930s Saratoga, however, is also what would make most people go through just about anything to be able to experience. He lands a girlfriend, a car, enough money to send home, but that dead monkey in his locker probably isn't a good sign, right?

No. No it is not.

I liked this one. The details were amazing, but Luper blends them into the story so that they don't feel like pointless trivia obtained to prove that there was some research going on here. Jack is a good, solid character, and I could never find myself wanting to throw something at him, which I find is my main reaction to most characters in most horse books. The only weaknesses, for me, were the great reveals in the end and the reactions to said great reveals that felt unbelievable or slightly forced. One reveal in particular felt like a moment where someone whips a sheet off the elephant in the room, and then having someone quickly cover it back up again. And most people never noticed the elephant, or the fact that it was uncovered, even briefly. Which made me question why there was an elephant to begin with.

I recommend this one, elephant or no.

Book Rec: Wild Girl by Patricia Reilly Giff

Wild Girl
Patricia Reilly Giff
2009

Lidie lives in Brazil. She's a wild girl who rides and dreams of one day going to live with her father and older brother in New York. Lidie's mother died long ago. When Lidie is twelve, it's time to leave for Queens, New York, where her father runs a stable at a famous racetrack and her brother is training to be a jockey.

Meanwhile, a foal is born on a farm and starts its journey to a new home. As Lidie's story unfolds, so does the tale of this filly.

When Lidie arrives in New York, she discovers that settling into her new world is a big challenge. And that her loving father and brother still think of her as the little girl they left behind. They don't even know what a strong rider she is. She must show them the real Lidie: she'll befriend, and ride, the filly her father just bought--Wild Girl.

The Review:
I've complained about a lot when it comes to middle grade horse fiction. Irritating main characters, predictable stories, super fantastic horses, antagonists with little to no purpose...the list just goes on and on. So here's when I say something a little out of character for me: Wild Girl should be on the reading lists of every aspiring or established author of horsey fiction.

It's not that it's amazing. It's just a good story, centered on a likable girl with realistic problems that have nothing to do with a horse of her own plot. The horse in question is not the second coming of every wonder horse in fiction. She's just a young filly that doesn't quite know what's expected of her, and is as equally scared as she is curious. Like most horses in the world.

Lidia arrives in New York knowing little English, and hardly knowing the father and brother that arrive to meet her. There is enough understandable awkwardness to go around, and Lidie is left feeling about as cold as the New York winter she's suddenly walked into from her Brazilian sunshine. It doesn't help matters that her family remembers her as a seven-year-old girl, obsessed with Disney and the color pink. Lidie's done some growing up, and these things were cast aside years ago, but she hasn't grown up enough to come out and easily tell her father and brother who she is, what she likes, and what she's capable of.

To make matters worse, nothing is exactly easy for Lidia on her first day of school. Language barriers create some horrifying memories, and she bolts, convinced that she's never going to fit in. Poor Lidia's got a lot on her plate, so when they drive out to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to pick up a couple of horses, she finds a bit of a kindred spirit in Wild Girl, a filly that's been on a similar journey.

So, this is where I stop talking about the plot, because I really liked this one. In the end, filly and girl are both missing something. They eventually find what they're looking for. It's a sweet book, with none of the usual grating horse story components you'll usually find. To help matters, it's a quick, well-written read. For instance, this is a chapter:

The filly felt the taste of the strange food in her mouth long after she'd swallowed. It was a good taste, the taste of a field on a summer day.

One of the creatures had come into her space. The noises it made were soft. It had brushed her side until her skin rippled with its good feeling.

And when the creature had climbed up on her, the filly had barely felt its weight, just its warmth.

It was something....

It wasn't like being in the field with the other horses, but still...

Something.

So go find it and read it already.

Occasionally, my faith in horse books is restored. But then it's just ripped to shreds again.

Chasing Blue
Canterwood Crest #2
by Jessica Burkhart
2009

Home (Bitter) Sweet Home

Now that Sasha Silver and her horse, Charm, have proven that they're worthy competitors for the Canterwood Crest equestrian team, Sasha's psyched to get back to school...until self-proclaimed It girl, queen bee, and owner of the I'm-so-way-better-than-you-are attitude, Heather Fox, is assigned as Sasha's riding partner.

Not. Good.

And when Heather starts spending a little too much QT with Sasha's almost-boyfriend, Jacob, their partnership is put to the ultimate test.

So recently I took a bit of a break from horse books, because I thought (wrongly) that I had to be reaching my quota on bad horse books by now. How many can I realistically read before ultimately going mad? I determined that the only way I could get back into this was to wait for a good book to come along, and so I picked Jessica Burkhart's Chasing Blue to ease me back into the grind. Jessica's series started out pretty strong, so I thought if any author could ward off the super crazy OMGWHY from overwhelming me, it is Jessica Burkhart. Plus, you know, it helps that I got this book for free.

Okay! Enough about me. Let's talk about Chasing Blue. I have really high hopes for this series, even more so now that I've read the second installment, because it has shockingly enough delivered. I wanted a book that managed to create a weird antagonistic, yet sort of functional, relationship/partnership between good girl Sasha and mean girl Heather, and I got just that. Even weirder, this relationship didn't even seem forced.

Heather and Sasha are teammates at Canterwood Crest, but they're also social rivals. Mainly, they just don't get along. So when it's announced that Canterwood is going to compete in this regional show, and Heather and Sasha are forced to partner up for practice, they're forced to face honesty. This shouldn't be that big of a deal, but we're talking about a horse book here. Honesty in most horse books is horrible. If you dare speak honestly in the Thoroughbred series, you are Brad Townsend. You are not Ashleigh Griffen, and you're not one of her protégés. You're not even one of her friends. You're WRONG. So when the girls in the advanced team at Canterwood Crest are told to grade each other on a jumping exercise, and Heather is the one person who is brutally honest, and Sasha is forced to agree with her even about her own (not a perfect ten, I'll say that right now) riding...I didn't know what to do except blink at the page.

This portion of the book I loved, to be honest. Now let's talk about the boys. A big secondary plotline of this book is a Valentine's Day dance that inevitably becomes the scene for the book's climax. Sasha is still in pre-teen love with Jacob, but Jacob keeps hanging out with Heather for seemingly no reason, rocking Sasha's tween love life to the core. Then there's this other guy, Eric, who likes Sasha and is creating tension between Sasha and her friend, Callie, who also likes Eric. It is a seventh grade soap opera, guys. Granted, it's been a long time since I was twelve, so I can't begin to judge what is going on here, but know that things don't exactly come out in Sasha's favor by the end of the book.

So Chasing Blue ends by giving Sasha some things to fix in the next book. Relationships will be tested, friendships have to be mended, and basically I always respect any middle grade horse book that doesn't try to tack on a happy ending in the last chapter of an angst-filled drama fest. Maybe this is just my experience with Thoroughbred talking. Maybe this is just a good book.

• I was a tad suspicious of the amazing level of awesome that involved the placements of the Canterwood Crest girls in their show. I liked that they really pushed themselves and practiced and were rewarded accordingly, but it seemed a little "whoa, that's an astonishing level of good."

• At the end, Sasha and Eric are outside in the rain in February in Connecticut. Not only this, but Eric is failing to wear a coat. He had best get his butt indoors because Connecticut in February is on average FREEZING. Living in Pittsburgh, where it it still basically winter, this makes me shudder just thinking about it.

• Congratulations, Jessica! I liked the action sequences this time through. I followed, and I paid attention, mainly because Sasha's narration keeps it snappy so you're not bogged down too much with the repetition of "and then this jump and then that jump" which makes me want to tear out my hair.

• Also, this just generally wins: Who falls asleep in a STALL?! Exactly, Sasha. Who indeed.

Okay, with my faith restored in the existence of good horse books, I will now continue with the regularly scheduled program of wincing and/or crying. I have the next book in Running Horse Ridge, and I suppose this now means I have to read it.

This is the best horsey romance novel ever written.

Millions to Spare
Thoroughbred Legacy #5
by Barbara Dunlop
2008

Reporter Julia Nash has waited years to join the top ranks of investigative journalists. When a trip to Dubai reveals the key to a mystery in the world of Thoroughbred racing, Julia finds her chance. But then she's caught snooping…and held in the sole custody of Lord Harrison Rochester!

As long as it takes. That's what Harrison vows when he keeps Julia at his desert estate. He'll discover what the beauty has been up to—even if the search leads to an attraction neither expected. But when Julia's safety is compromised, they must say goodbye…or "I do."

I debated over whether or not to post this synopsis, because it's just so stupid it makes my head hurt. Okay, actually, when I bought this I bought it because of this synopsis. I'll admit that much. It made me laugh out loud in the grocery store, where I was standing shamelessly in front of a Harlequin novel display. (I was in Detroit. I didn't know anyone who wasn't related to me. It was okay.) I wanted this book to be a really awful Stockholm Syndrome crazyfest that happened to involve horses (somehow) and instead...oh, instead. Instead I got the most awesome romance novel that I've ever read. I actually stayed up into the early hours of morning to finish this thing, and that sort of obsessive behavior is usually reserved for the most awesome of books. Books that are not romances. Or horse books, as it turns out. Usually.

I know! That was unexpected. So let's just start. Because I might like this book a whole damn lot, but it's so insane that I do have to recap it. Julia Nash is at Nad al Sheba, doing something related to Quest and her Equine Earth (think Thoroughbred Times) job when she sees a horse that is the spitting image of Leopold's Legacy, the horse with father issues. Previous experience with Leopold's Legacy look alikes lead me to believe this horse is a plain bay, but this time out he's a distinctive dun with a flaxen tail. Well, whatever. Stunned, Julia goes to take a picture of the horse and is thwarted by security and this creepy guy with the end of his nose cut off. She is informed that this horse is Millions to Spare, owned by Cadair Racing. Julia, trying to be good at investigative reporting, climbs into the Cadair trailer to get a saliva sample from the horse, only to get stuck in the trailer and accidentally transported all the way back to Cadair, where she is discovered and hauled off to jail.

Jail in Dubai is glorious. No, actually, they strip search her and take away all her clothes, leaving her with a cotton cover up of some sort. Julia spends the rest of her time contemplating whether or not to pee in the drain, because no one seems interested in her bodily functions and she has no other option.

Now we get to meet Harrison and his lawyer friend, Alex. Because Harrison is English and apparently a diplomat, he's hosting this meeting over a pipeline or whatnot that was important for, like, a page. Because Julia shows up in his horse trailer, and this meeting is coming up, he comes to the stunning conclusion that Julia is a secret operative with the CIA. I know, right? It can't get better than this. For whatever reason, Harrison decides to bribe the police and get Julia put in his custody. Because it's more convenient for him to watch her just in case she does turn out to be a spy, in which case he's totally prepared to handle her when he willingly brings her into his home, the place she was (according to his logic) trying to get into in the first place? Either Harrison is remarkably hands on or he's insane. Because this book is so awesome, it's got to be the former.

Anyhoo, he goes and gets Julia, telling her that she'll be placed in his care until he feels convinced she's no threat, or some such. Julia immediately requests a phone, and he decides that, you know, he'd like to not let a potential spy have access to a phone. Instead he has her write down all her contacts and then tells her that he'll have his assistant tell, like, her family and all her friends, that she met a guy and would really like to whore around Dubai. He comes up with this plan because he's somehow found out that she was wearing a thong before the strip search, resulting in this gem of a conversation:

"You think that because I wear a thong I'll jump into bed with a man I just met?"
"I think your underwear was designed to share."
"Not with an insufferable bastard like you."
"But, Julia. Since your friends have never met me, they won't know I'm an insufferable bastard, will they?"

Oh, point taken, Harrison. Then he does super secret diplomat things, like checking out her magazine's website. Indeed Julia is a reporter, but then that could be a cover! He decides to keep her at his Dubai palace (because he has a Dubai palace) just in case. The next day, Julia decides that she's going to keep on not telling him that she thinks Millions to Spare and Leopold's Legacy are somehow related, and decides to do an impromptu interview that he just decides to go along with. Here we discover his full name and title is The Right Honorable Lord Harrison William Arthur Beaumont-Rochester Baron Welsmeire. And this pops up more than you might think. After this enlightening conversation, Julia runs into Millions to Spare in the stable and rips out some of his hair, because she now only owns whatever she left the jail in and therefore lost her previous sample. And then the horse dies, provoking Harrison into a fit that finally gets Julia to come out with her real reason behind all of this.

So everyone's on the same page. Finally. Harrison and Julia go to the Preston's hotel to sort things out and give Julia her life back, leaving Alex and Harrison's fiancee to be, Brittany, alone to bitch at each other. Something to Talk About (horse from previous book) runs in the Sandstone Derby and wins, during which Harrison tells everyone that Millions to Spare and Leopold's Legacy are related, resulting in some minor plot. Julia decides to stick around in Dubai until she can gather enough information to write a fantastic piece, only to discover that the police feel they haven't been bribed well enough and are out looking for her again. She tries for the airport, only to run back to Harrison, resulting in the most amazing romantic action sequence since Romancing the Stone. No. Really.

Anyway, that party/meeting is happening when Julia arrives. The police are not far behind her, so Harrison decides to drive her out into the desert, but not before Brittany decides that she has to swap clothes with Julia in order to serve as a proper decoy. Alex and Brittany ride off on horseback, leaving Julia in this silver evening gown...in which she is going to evade police! Fantastic. Harrison (also in a tux, I should mention) and Julia drive off into the desert, starting a police chase that doesn't end until they hit full on sand dunes. Alex and Brittany, because they are the second romantic couple in this book, and also happen to be awesome, ride their horses to a shack and then call a taxi to go to some city...but I'll get back to them in a minute, because Harrison and Julia are fending off desert raiders on camels and horses! In evening wear! Oh my God.

Actually, they just go faster than horses and camels can travel, leaving the raiders behind. Although they do notice that the guy with no nose was among the raiders, looking threatening. Wow, a double pronged threat. Police and crazy mob/raiders...all after Julia for seemingly no reason. Anyway, Harrison and Julia wind up at this oasis and spend some time with one of his people's relatives. There they decide that they should really have sex, because we've gone a lot of pages without sex, and this is a romance novel. So sex happens, and he spontaneously starts muttering French, and she spontaneously understands him, to which he's all shocked and she asks him if they could just blame the adrenaline. Then this conversation:

"I mean, have you ever..."
"Had sex?"
"Had sex like that."
"You mean in French?"
"I didn't realize you spoke French."
"No kidding."
"You're not going to tell me you just had the most incredibly mind-blowing experience of your life, are you?"
"Are you the kind of guy who needs to hear that?"
"It must have been the adrenaline."

Just in case you're curious...it gets more awesome from here because Brittany and Alex are at a water park. I am not kidding. I couldn't even begin to embellish this because this book is just that hilarious. So, yeah, Brittany and Alex are buying swim suits, and he challenges her to wear the most hideous thing he can find, which she totally accepts because she's into one upping him at any opportunity. So she wears his choice and knocks him dead in it, of course. And they, like, go on water slides. And apparently this is sexy or something. I was astonished. Amazed. I would read it again. It totally beat out that time in that other romance novel where the main couple went to Toys R Us.

But back to Harrison and Julia...they are currently at the oasis and dealing with a sand storm. Yup, a sand storm. Which would give them opportunity for more sex, but they have to talk about Brittany and so they don't have sex. Instead they decide that there is a way for Julia to get back on a plane bound for Kentucky! She would have to have a diplomatic passport...the kind she could only get if she happened to marry a diplomat, which Harrison just happens to be. But Harrison puts his foot down. No...nope. He's marrying Brittany because she's the acceptable choice, and he cannot get married to an American in the middle of the desert. No. He would sooner pack up the Jeep and find a way to illegally smuggle her out of the country. Yes...that is a much more fantastic plan! But then, the next morning, he has a change of heart. They are so going to get married in the desert. And they do. They actually do. Only if they immediately get divorced. Julia agrees and then they send for a helicopter and helicopter her passport out to be changed to a diplomatic passport, which comes back swiftly in time for them to hop in the helicopter and realize, to everyone's immense astonishment (only a little too late because they are in the air) that the no nose guy is flying the freaking helicopter. Harrison has to beat the guy up while they're taking turns flying the helicopter, resulting in hysterics before, quite out of nowhere, Harrison pushes the guy out of the helicopter. At this point, Julia decides to ask him if he can fly a helicopter. He responds that of course he can fly a helicopter. I mean, notice how they aren't crashing right now.

Meanwhile! Oh, meanwhile. Brittany and Alex decide that she should really stop being a virgin because she's 25 and clearly he is the best choice to remedy her curiosity. But she is supposed to get engaged! To Harrison, with whom they share so many things in common, like "religion, politics, art and mutual friends" (and this is stated several times, just like this, much to my amusement). So they have sex and ponder openly to each other:

"I can't believe I'm about to ruin our lives."
"Never stop ruining my life."
"I could ruin your life forever."

That is the best, best, BEST sex talk ever, I think.

Okay, then things calm down. Harrison and Julia have their last night together, during which he's supposed to find the Arabic initials to his name in the henna designs on her body, only belatedly realizes he doesn't know how to read Arabic. She informs him that she would like a Dalmatian puppy named Herman, and then they have sex. They go to Kentucky, where they get all upset about this marriage thing and how he's supposed to propose to Brittany, who clearly is not interested in him, but they don't know that, and they part ways thinking it's over. Harrison visits Brittany, who cuts him loose by saying she's in love with this American (Alex), Harrison meets Alex and tells him Brittany is in love with an American, Alex is all "WHAT AMERICAN?!" Ha ha. Harrison is all, "um, I think she means you." Alex then rushes to Brittany and they decide to get together, no matter what her father wants for her, because Alex is sort of wealthy. Alex says that they could tell her father that he "used to kill people professionally and blow things up recreationally." Because that will surely change Brittany's dad's mind. Brittany's all, "yeah, probably not. Let's just get married." I guess they get married.

Cue Harrison! He goes back to Kentucky with a Dalmatian puppy he names Herman. Only Julia has also acquired her own Dalmatian puppy, also named Herman. They meet at her cabin at Quest (because she lives there for some reason) and ponder this serious two puppies development. They decide that they should stay married, own both puppies, live in Windsor, raise Dalmatians, plant a cherry orchard, and travel on their diplomatic passports.

THE END.

So, maybe it doesn't make much sense, but then it is part of this series that is not ever going to resolve its horse daddy issues until the very last book. I'm sure. So I loved it. If I didn't have so many horse books to read, I'd freaking read it again. Best. Horse. Romance. Novel. Ever.

Take the Reins: calling to the horse lover in every tween fashionita's soul.

Take the Reins
Canterwood Crest #1
by Jessica Burkhart
2009

A few months ago I had a weird urge to find something akin to Gossip Girl meets Thoroughbred, and if this book was aimed toward young adults instead of middle grade readers, this would have been it.

Okay, here's the synopsis, because two previous posts including the exact same synopsis is not enough:

When Sasha Silver and her horse, Charm, arrive on the campus of the elite Canterwood Crest Academy, Sasha knows that she's in trouble. She's not exactly welcomed with open arms. One group of girls in particular is used to being the best, the brightest, and the prettiest on the team, and when Sasha shows her skills in the arena, the girls' claws come out.

Sasha is determined to prove that she belongs at Canterwood. Will she rise to the occasion and make the advanced riding team by the end of her first semester? Or will the pressure send Sasha packing?

In a lot of ways, this book reminds me of The It Girl, the spin-off of Gossip Girl. Only it's not a product placement machine, because I'm pretty sure the goal of The It Girl is to make every girl who can't afford Manolo Blahniks by the time she's 15 feel ratty and poor. Canterwood Crest has one foot in this socially upscale boarding school world, and one foot planted in a horse stall. This series is the flighty, catty social structure of rich teens slamming into what's supposed to be the responsible and sentimental background of horse ownership. You'd think some serious issues would pop up because of this, but lucky for us horses and the social elite are well-versed in each other.

Sasha is the new girl at Canterwood Crest, recently plucked out of her public middle school because her local riding instructor determined that she had little else to teach her. Luckily for Sasha, Canterwood Crest is also rigorous academically, otherwise I'd think that her parents are easily led and all she wants to do with herself is ride. Sasha immediately starts off on the bad foot, letting her spooking horse (Charm, who I keep mentally picturing as a gray when he is actually chestnut, and I think I have the racehorse Silver Charm to blame for this) get away from her and cause an accident with Heather, the resident antagonist. Because of this mishap, Sasha has more or less painted a target on her back, and Heather is shooting for her big time. Matters are not helped when Heather finds out that Sasha is a fairly accomplished rider, and she feels threatened when Sasha makes the intermediate team with most of the other characters in the book.

Thus starts the pranks. Heather is sort of intense about being a bitch, and these pranks go from fake accidents to switching stalls to sabotage to mind games. All you need to know about how intense Heather is occurs when Sasha walks into Charm's stall and finds her friend Callie hunched in the corner of the stall whispering about how Sasha should really look after her tack. Because I guess Heather has a history with tack sabotage. Sasha has a lot on her hands here in terms of a girl antagonist, but now we will focus on Zac Efron.

There is a boy in this book, because you have to remember that this series is a hybrid. Our Thoroughbred characters never gave boys the time of day because they literally had no room in their brains to ponder anything other than horses. For books like The It Girl, there is nothing but boys, competition over boys, and family dysfunction that usually occurs because of a boy. For Canterwood Crest, there is room for both boys and horses. This might sound shocking, but dear Sasha is probably the most normal twelve-year-old, horse obsessed rich girl I've ever read about. She watches tv, she comprehends wearing clothes that are not ready made for barn work, and she gets the basic concept of a crush. And she has a thing for Zac Efron, so when a Zac Efron look alike comes bounding along she's stumbling all over herself. They have a film class together, and by the joy of arranged seats they get to know each other in a youthfully bashful sort of way.

The book reaches its climax with two events: a winter dance (wherein the Zac Efron look alike dances with Sasha) and the test for the advanced team. The results are the most predictable thing about the book; I don't need to repeat them here because if you've read a horse book you know what happens. However, the results for the seventh grade advanced team are a means to setting up the rest of the series. Catty girls have to mix with the responsible girls to become teammates...not friends. I'm actually more interested in the rest of the series than I ultimately was with this book because I think the concept of nice girl and the antagonist girl having to work together to produce a good team result hasn't exactly been done before (at least successfully) in a middle grade horse book. Typically, the two characters are always pitted against each other in a tired recycled plotline that leads up to a final show, and I have a hope that this will be a breath of fresh air in that if they're ultimately encouraged to act as a team then they'll focus their pissy relationship outside of the ring, which has to be more engaging at this point.

• I've said it before about first time authors: expect craziness. This book was low on the crazy factor, in that there wasn't any definite plot point that felt sticky to me. However, there did seem to be an unnecessary amount of scenes. Such as the section when Paige's mom goes on and on about rearranging their dorm furniture, culminating in the decision to move their beds five inches to allow more space. It's like...well, yeah. You could press the beds right against the wall, but then why are we talking about this? What's the point? That was my main question for a few areas of the book.

• A lack of pertinent description is probably my big question mark throughout. Much of the description is done well, but then when it comes down to action I'm left feeling little to nothing, leading me ultimately to rereading a scene to figure out what the hell just happened. Consider: before the lone horse show in the book, Sasha finds the groom holding Charm, who is not moving. Sasha has a little moment of panic about this when I was wondering what her deal was. Groom holding horse, horse not moving. Is the horse on the ground? What is going on? Lots of horses just stand there, so when Sasha runs up in a panic about things after a description of Charm standing still...I'm totally lost. As it turns out, Charm's mane was chewed up and his braids were ruined, resulting in Sasha simply buzzing his mane off in a rush. And that was it.

• I like Sasha. She doesn't come off as totally superior to Heather in all ways imaginable, which is one of my big problems with horse books in general. Heather is given reasons to act the way she does, and while those reasons are slightly predictable, at least there are reasons. In terms of riding, they feel fairly equal to me on that front, which is another plus.

• Equal character development. Most of the time, I always feel like horse books focus too much on the one main character and the horse. Jessica spends time giving character to Callie, Paige, and even the dorm adviser. I really appreciated this.

• A few typos. Nothing hugely problematic, but noticeable.

Okay, to sum up: I liked it. I guess that's obvious when I don't post a full recap. As a horse book, it's better than a good portion of middle grade books out there. As a cliquey Gossip Girl sort of book, that isn't my area of expertise. The only thing I can say there is that it thankfully did not try to sell Manolo Blahniks to seventh graders.

That said, I'll be looking out for the next one.

It's another book I must decline ripping to shreds.

The Perfect Distance: A Novel
by Kim Ablon Whitney
Published: 2005

Sometimes Francie Martinez feels like she's hovering between two worlds. Her father is Mexican, and her mother -- although she doesn't really count -- is American. Francie spends hours mucking stalls with the other Mexican grooms, but when she mounts her horse, Tobey, she is a determined, talented rider, just like any of the other girls at West Hills. At school, she's known as "the horse girl," but in the ring (and to Rob, one of the best trainers in the country), she's not the girl who wins -- Tara is.

Now Francie is ready to secure a place for herself in a world where she knows she belongs. It's always been her dream to win the Maclay Finals in New York City, and this year -- her last year -- she has to win. Francie can't imagine her life without horses; she's serious about riding, and this is her final chance to prove it to Rob (who is so busy praising Tara that he barely notices her), to her father (who has been collecting college brochures for the past six months), and to Tara (who's sure she's going to win). And then there's the new boy, Colby, who is becoming a distraction just when Francie needs to focus more than ever.

In this deftly told coming-of-age story by the author of the critically acclaimed See You Down the Road, Francie faces more than the ring as she tries to figure out what kind of rider -- and person -- she wants to be.

You know, horse books seem to have fashioned a bad reputation for themselves. They're formulaic, and if you read this blog on any sort of regular basis the formula has probably slapped you in the face pretty much every day you've read it: Amazing girl or boy. Amazing horse. Snobby antagonist. Sudden drama. Win win win! It just goes around and around like a vicious cycle of ickiness. This is probably why I can get so, um, vitriolic here. Someone write something new. It's all I'm really asking.

It's not surprising that horse books have a hard road to hoe when it comes to being taken seriously. Really, it's to the point where I think most people write horse books off as being general wish fulfillment fantasies aimed toward the female gender. People don't take this seriously, and that's fine really, because occasionally books like The Perfect Distance come along and blow me away.

Francie Martinez is a groom at West Hills, one of the best places to train in the country. She's also a rider, but the distinction is her father is the West Hills barn manager, with absolutely no money to pay for the kind of training one needs to make it to the Maclay Finals and onward to Grand Prix. Francie is good, but she's not as good as Tara, the great West Hills hope for their trainer, Rob. Rob is the equestrian version of God, and Francie spends most of her lessons scrambling for his attention the way he lavishes it on Tara.

It's pretty apparent straight off that Francie isn't exactly comfortable in her skin. Literally and figuratively. She's half Mexican, and she bluntly points out that there are no Hispanic riders in America. To make matters worse, there's the obvious distinction between groom and rider. Francie isn't a working student, and whenever she tries to break out of her confines to interact with Colby (who is gorgeous and funny and rich and a good rider in his own right) her father slaps her down because he's been there and done that with her nonexistent mother, and look where that wound up. She's having a hard time balancing being both groom and rider, and people like Tara make the distinction obvious whenever they can.

Then there's school. Francie is a public school kid, whereas the other kids at West Hills are either privately tutored (her best friend, Katie, and Colby) or they dropped out to focus on riding (Tara). But even at school, Francie has a hard time fitting in. She's always focused on riding and school work, therefore she's not around, leaving her very existence mostly a mystery to the rest of the local kids. This leaves Francie as eager to please, and a basket case when she's put on the spot. It's shocking she can handle the ordeals of a normal day, much less the pressures of a show.

Despite these things, it's obvious that Francie is a good rider, and she's justified in dreaming of beating Tara in the Maclay Finals. But the book is more than this. Unlike just about every other book involving girls, horses, show jumping, and the mention of Olympic dreams, it doesn't end like you expect, and it manages to hit a completely different note than the scores of other books that have meagerly tried and miserably failed at the same point. It makes the kind of note that doesn't blatantly say: it doesn't matter what personal growth this character makes because she's going to win anyway because she's irritatingly perfect and you can be too!

And that...that's all I really want, folks.

So you've obviously figured out by now that I'm not going to recap this whole book and I'm not going to really give up the ending or much of the plot. All I can say at this point is to go find it and read it. You'll be happy you did.

Hex: a mystery book rec

Hex
A Ruby Murphy Mystery
by Maggie Estep
Published: 2003

Like I said back when we covered The Alibi Man, I'm not one for mysteries or cop drama. But I bought this book and its sequel years ago. Go figure. Maggie Estep isn't exactly your typical mystery/thriller writer, so Hex has that going for it. However, it is, for all intents and purposes, essentially a first novel. So it's got that going against it. Let's take a look at the summary.

Having drifted through thirty-three years of life, Ruby Murphy has put down roots in a rootless place: Coney Island. A recovering alcoholic who is fanatical in her love for animals and her misanthropic friends, Ruby lives above a furniture store and works at the musty Coney Island Museum. One day, Ruby is on the subway heading into Manhattan when the train stalls between stations. An elegant blond woman with a scarred face strikes up a conversation, and a misunderstanding between the two women leads to an offer Ruby decides she can't refuse. The woman needs her boyfriend followed, and she thinks Ruby is the woman to do it -- and do it right.

Ruby's life has been flat and painful lately. The Coney Island Museum isn't doing much business, Ruby's live-in boyfriend has moved out, and her best friend Oliver is battling cancer. Ruby agrees to follow the woman's boyfriend, Frank, a man who works at Belmont Racetrack and seems to hang out in odd places with bad company. Ruby soon finds herself pushed headfirst into horse racing's seamy underbelly. This is a dangerous world where nothing is as it appears, and people and horses seem to have limited life spans. When Ruby finds herself staring down the barrel of a loaded gun, she beings to have second thoughts.

Only now it's far too late.

What's good about this story is it's mainly populated by a bunch of quirky characters, and Ruby is not at all a Mary Sue turned hard ass. She's mostly just an eccentric, who loves Coney Island, horses, and the piano. The book is told entirely in the first person, but it switches viewpoints between Ruby and other characters: her piano teacher, her friend with cancer, a groom at Belmont, an assistant trainer at Belmont, and Ruby's neighbor. So it's attempting to give you strings of the main plot through people who don't necessarily know what the hell is going on. The good thing about this is it saves Ruby from being a complete author insert, but it slows the whole thing down until the most interesting stuff happens in the last four chapters. You'll find yourself skimming through some of the extraneous crap, because try as I might, I couldn't bring myself to care that much about Ruby's neighbor's girlfriend's bad breast implants, which take up more of the book than I remembered.

Anyway, the book opens up with Ruby on her way to her piano lesson. The train is stuck on the tracks, and to pass the time a blond woman strikes up a conversation with a less than willing Ruby. To be a jerk, Ruby tells the woman she's a private investigator and wow, what a shock, this woman desperately needs a private investigator. Try as she might, Ruby cannot escape the woman's desperate pleas for help, even after Ruby levels with her that she is not anything remotely resembling a private investigator. This doesn't not dampen the woman's spirits, and before you know it Ruby is hired to follow around Frank, a possibly cheating boyfriend.

Is Frank cheating? Really, no one really needs a private investigator to figure this out. Ruby is of this mindset the entire time, so I appreciate that. Of course Frank is cheating. Frank is also a groom at Belmont, so in order to get Ruby closer to the action, the woman (Ariel, who has spent all her money on developing a hybrid orchid and is not at all mentally well) pulls strings and gets Ruby a job as a hotwalker for a trainer at Belmont. This should be your first tip that things aren't right with Ariel, but it's so subtle you'd never really see it until later. Ruby meets Ned, assistant trainer, and they begin dating eventually, but things turn horribly wrong when Ruby begins to suspect him of suspicious behavior after someone Frank was carrying on with dies at the track. Mainly this involves her seeing him with a gun after they've had sex. Ruby reacts badly. Things spiral out of control from there, revealing Ariel's real motives and Ned's real identity. The FBI come along, and things end with Ned (or Edward, as he is actually known) patching things up with Ruby, Ned calling in favors to find a crazy Russian woman who stole his kitten, and Ruby going on a wild ride on an ex-race horse.

Anyway, I'm not going too in depth on this one because that would ruin the suspense. It's a good book, although it gets stuck in places with characters that aren't exactly relevent to the plot. I think this is rectified in the sequel. The racetrack scenes are fantastic in this book, so that's mainly why I'm reccing it. And it's not totally ridiculous, and I like FBI agents. So, consider this recced.

This is a trilogy, Gargantuan and Flamethrower following Hex. Maggie Estep has another horse racing book coming out in May called Alice Fantastic.

Spin number two on the Harlequin round robin.

Biding Her Time
by Wendy Warren
Thoroughbred Legacy Series #2
Published: 2008

So, here's a disturbing fact about me: I anonymously badgered my local library system, of which I am a fully functioning employee (because like hell I'm putting my name on all of these requests, you know what I mean?) to buy this whole series. Badgered like you will not believe. I'm not normally like this, so I guess I'll chalk up this irrational behavior to being a blogger. And a librarian. That's a pretty tricky situation, that. Anyway, I am pleased to announce that the system purchased the whole damn series. For me. And I am freaking thrilled about this for the fact that I have more silly horsey romance novels to throw away my time on.

How did Audrey Griffin - a blacksmith by trade - become a wine hostess? Sure, she's all about "seizing the day," but she's a tomboy, not a booth bunny. Granted, her makeover has transformed her into a hottie - but when you're working with a straitlaced Aussie god like vintner Shane Preston, a little fashion goes a long way!

Unfortunately, no-strings-attached doesn't work for Shane. Something about Audrey makes him want more from their fiery attraction - despite the fact that "commitment" leaves Audrey shakier than a horse on Rollerblades. Is she balking at love or simply biding her time?

So, look, I don't enjoy this, okay? It's petty and trite and ridiculous, but I'm reading it because it's called "Thoroughbred Legacy" and therefore why would I not read it? I don't like romances because women are commonly painted as independent while they're really aching to be dominated and men are displayed as heroic and supportive when they're one step away from being abusive, if they aren't obviously being abusive. It's not sexy, okay? Unfortunately for me, most of the romances I've read for this blog fall into this category. Men dominate, women love to be dominated (because it's somehow liberating?), blah blah yell yell kiss kiss blah blah babies! It's really tiresome. Imagine my surprise when this book totally exceeded my expectations.

By saying this, of course, realize that it's still a romance novel. My expectations were pretty low. I was expecting the usual story, and instead got this hilariously weird Harlequin version of the Thoroughbred series meets Sweet November. If that makes sense. Well, let's just get to the plot.

Do we all remember Quest and the Leopold's Legacy ordeal? No? Well, Leopold's Legacy was going to win the Triple Crown, but just before the Belmont Stakes the racing industry collectively decided to start acting like the Jerry Springer Show and had a fit about the horse's paternity. So Quest had to pull the horse from the race and all hell broke loose and Quest is going through some hard times. Quest is owned by the American Prestons. As opposed to the Australian Prestons, which also exist. Okay. That all said, Audrey Griffin is Quest's blacksmith. She's a tomboy and doesn't eat properly (her idea of dinner is popcorn covered in caramel sauce, if you wanted an example) and likes jeans. There's not much feminine about her, other than she is female. Then you have Shane, one of the Australian Prestons. I feel like I should develop a family tree to explain this, but he's the nephew of the owners of Quest. He's all suave and rich and whatnot. We begin our story in a bar, while Audrey is dancing around and watching him and trying to talk herself into being daring while he gives her a look and then proceeds to ignore her. That was kind of awesome.

So Audrey is left dancing with a jockey in a chaotic and unimpressive manner while Shane talks to his cousin about wine or something because that's what they do. He may be an Australian Preston, but he was the younger son and therefore not into horses, I guess. So he's dealing with his handicapped cousin, whose parents died in a tragic tractor accident that left her paralyzed. Shane has taken over the business and is desperately looking for a way to get her back on her feet in a literal sense. Later on Audrey and Shane discover each other at Quest, resulting in hilarity while Jenna, Quest's matriarch, demands that Audrey be Shane's "booth bunny" during their wine show/tour/whatever that was. Booth bunnies are apparently the wine world's porn actresses, or something, which means that Audrey is the last person Shane needs to come with him to this wine thing. But Audrey has always wanted to travel, and Jenna's all urging her to go so she won't quit because she needs health insurance because she was a cancer victim when she was a kid and could relapse at any time. Audrey's prickly about this, refusing to talk to anyone about her cancer ordeal, especially considering she might be relapsing at that very moment. She's just refusing to think about it, preferring to just live for the moment. Shane is the very opposite of this. Planning is a turn on for him. Seriously.

Eventually they work it out so that she'll be his booth assistant. I found it sort of endearing that their first kiss happens while she's splattered caramel all over her shirt (in a non-sexy way, if caramel can be sexy, which I'm pretty sure it can't be, but still) and somehow managed to smear it all over his sleeve. They manage to not have sex immediately, waiting until after they get to New York and after she decides it's time to cut her hair for the first time since growing it back after chemo. So she pretties herself up and Shane is all wow, you're even more of a girl. Astonishing! He tries to take her out to a fantastically boring dinner, but she demands that they go to Toys R Us instead and eat vendor food. I found all of this fascinating. Then they have sex. The non-disturbing kind that couldn't be construed as rape. All very wonderful. Unfortunately here I sort of dozed off. Wine is not important to me. It's just, you know, a beverage.

Getting through these wine shows quickly, we'll just say that they happened. Good. Audrey continues to get sicker, not wanting to tell anyone about her cancer ordeal from years past, but then it gets to a point that Shane's all, "look, tell me what the hell is going on" and she still won't, so everything implodes and she decides that now is about time to go see her mom, who abandoned her after her cancer went into remission for the first time. She goes out to visit for the first time, astonishing herself into understanding that she has a choice here: be healthy or sick, loved or not. So she decides she likes her blue jeans and that she has to get over everything and go to the doctor. They do the biopsy, and just before the results are announced Shane and his cousin show up. Actually, everyone shows up, and Audrey comes clean and Shane's all yeah, I know because no one can keep your secrets, you know. And it's such a romance novel at this point, only in a good way. He wants to marry her despite her probable inability to have kids (he wanted to have four at one point, as part of his grand plan, which I found pretty damn funny), and as an engagement present he has not a ring, but a horse -- this filly that Audrey loves called Biding Her Time (hello title of the book...they're all named after the horses, I guess). I found this fitting. Then the doctor announces that she doesn't have cancer, but does have some non-fatal virus, and needs to not eat caramel for dinner anymore. It's kind of sweet. Sickeningly so.

The horse scene is less prominent in this book, which is too bad because this one is a hell of a lot better than the first book in the series. The overall plot of the series progresses a tiny bit in that everyone outside Quest decides to blame Brent Preston (the breeder and/or trainer) and the vet. That's all there.

• I like Shane. He is the first romance novel guy I have ever actually liked. And I like him mainly because people keep dirtying his clothing and he doesn't seem to care. And he doesn't act all possessive. And he's fairly laid back. And he lets Audrey take him to a Toys R Us store. And he brings his cousin ice cream and when she tells him she can't eat any because she ate too many cookies he says: "You can. Each carton comes equipped with its own miniature spoon" like this is the most amazing invention ever.
  

• The sex scene is pretty tame by Harlequin standards. It's actually pretty tame by Joanna Campbell's standards circa 1981. This I also appreciated, because there is nothing like poorly written sex. In that it is horrible.
  

• I kinda wanted Audrey to have cancer at the end, because in this instance the end was almost too sappy. I can take a fairly high level of sap and keep going, but this book's ending was definitely difficult for me to get through without rolling my eyes.

• At one point, Melanie, random Preston daughter, tells Audrey that they might have to sell Biding Her Time to someone that would put the filly into "claiming stakes." This is clearly the worst thing that can ever happen to a horse.
  

• Yes, I also liked Audrey. I liked that her first thought after screwing things up with Shane wasn't to run after him, but to fly out and meet her mom for the first time in ten years. And I like that she missed her jeans and came to her decision to choose life without having Shane present for that decision. It was weird and very non-romance novel.
  

So, I liked it. It still fell into the tired old romance novel concepts (especially the ages: Audrey is 24 and Shane is 34...that is about as romance novel as you can get), but it managed to not make me feel dirty simply by opening the book, and for that I give Wendy Warren a heartfelt thank you.

Next up, I venture back into Karen Bentley's world. By this I do not mean that I will review Ashleigh's Hope. But what else is there, you might be asking yourself. What else, indeed.

With that, Happy Halloween!

This is a horse story on valium.

Riding Lessons
by Sara Gruen
Published: 2004

I will admit that I steered clear of this book for a long time. Basically since it was published. I remember finding it repeatedly in book stores and repeatedly putting it back on the shelf, I suppose mainly because I was convinced it was nothing more than a romance novel masquerading as "serious" fiction, whatever that is.

Earlier this year I read Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen's third novel. It has horses in it (hell, it's about the circus...of course it has horses in it) but not to the extent that I would read it for this blog. I flew through that one in just under a day and loved it, despite what I thought was an unfortunately weird and unrealistic ending. I'd still recommend it, so I started to eye her earlier books with less reluctance. And then Riding Lessons and Flying Changes were requested for the blog, and that just worked out for me. So thank you, whoever it was that requested these books. I finally convinced myself to read them, all thanks to you.

As a world-class equestrienne and Olympic contender, Annemarie Zimmer lived for the thrill of flight atop a strong, graceful animal. Then, at eighteen, a tragic accident destroyed her riding career and Harry, her beloved and distinctively marked horse.

Now, twenty years later, Annemarie is coming home to her dying father’s New Hampshire horse farm. Jobless and abandoned, she is bringing her troubled teenaged daughter to this place of pain and memory, where ghosts of an unresolved youth still haunt the fields and stables—and where hope lives in the eyes of the handsome, gentle veterinarian Annemarie loved as a girl, and in the seductive allure of a trainer with a magic touch.

But everything will change once again with one glimpse of a red-and-white-striped gelding startlingly familiar to the one Annemarie lost in another lifetime. And an obsession is born that could shatter her fragile world…

There you have it, guys. Tragedy, drama, life changes, and a brindled horse. What more do you want? Well? I should mention that this is a debut novel, which seems to be an easy way to explain any insanity, should there be any. Lucky for us there is little insanity that isn't intentional in this book, because as you can imagine with that summary, there will be plenty of hysterics to go through.

Well, anyway. Annemarie is our main character. She's 38, lives in Minneapolis, has a 15-year-old daughter named Eva, works as a technical writer/editor/something like that, and is married to Roger, a lawyer. Looking at her now, you'd never know she was a Grand Prix rider when she was 18, but all of that ended when her horse crumpled during competition and sent both of them head first into the dirt. The horse, a chestnut brindled Hanoverian named Harry, is destroyed and Annemarie only wishes she could have been put down right along with him. Instead she suffers near catastrophic injuries and somehow manages to fully recover. By the time she's walking again, she wants nothing to do with horses and, in order to assure herself that she'll never get on a horse again, she marries Roger at 19 and runs off to Minnesota.

These first few chapters were exceedingly well done, actually. Sara Gruen takes you through the competition with Anniemare and Harry, making show jumping actually seem interesting to me. So this has become my test to see if a book passes muster: if it makes a repetitive motion I've read about countless times feel breathtaking, like I'm reading the same stuff for the first time, the book is worthwhile. Sara Gruen manages this in the first chapter. So I guess I could shut this review down now. But I won't. I have other things to get to, because it's not all sunshine and roses here, guys.

After these initial chapters, we get to Annemarie's life at present. Her 38-year-old self is about ready to take another fall, which happens in the form of 1) getting laid off and 2) her husband telling her that it's over. He has a 23-year-old girl he'd really like to have sex with more than her. This is his plan. No one can sway him from his plan, which is good because Annemarie does the equivalent of a shrug. More or less. She just calls up her mom to tell her she's coming home, but her mom just informs her that her father has ALS, or Lou Gehrig's Disease. The world has officially ended. Annemarie goes home to face the family she basically ran away from twenty years ago, dragging her petulant teenager along with her.

Because this is in the first person, we get a lot of Annemarie's internal angsting over all of this. She's got issues with everything, from her memories of her father being a drill sergeant forcing her to ride until she found Harry and rode because she loved Harry, to her mother's disapproval over twenty years, to her daughter testing every boundary a teenager can test, to the guy (Dan) she loved more than Roger but left because her parents actually liked him (the horror), to the divorce papers she filed, to her failed marriage...you name it, Annemarie is angsting over it. Essentially.

While she's there, Annemarie decides to take up managing the family's barn. It's a high class barn, filled with high class horses that I'm sure plenty of high class people are riding and paying plenty to keep in high class conditions. They have a French trainer named Jean-Claude, for Christ's sake. Annemarie figures this managing thing shouldn't be very hard, so she takes up the reins and takes the barn for a test drive. We'll see how that turns out a little later.

As it happens, Dan is still around. He's a vet, Annemarie's parents are still in love with him, and he runs a rescue somewhere nearby. Eva starts to volunteer for him, although that's sort of a tenuous situation because Eva is experiencing her raging teenage hormone years right now. Anyway, Dan recently picked up a horse at auction, and it's a chestnut brindled Hanoverian with one eye. Turns out Harry has a full brother, you guys. His name was Highland Hurrah, and Annemarie's parents considered buying him for her had she not run off and gotten married. This horse is now 17, and was also a Grand Prix jumper with someone named Ian. Only he was supposed to have died in a fire. Annemarie is flummoxed. Flummoxed! Or, well, she cries a lot. Same thing. She insists on adopting the brindled horse, and then she becomes obsessed with finding out everything she can about Highland Hurrah. To the point that she insists that Dan get this old scanner that could read any old chip that Hurrah might have had. He does this and calls it in before Annemarie can change her mind, resulting in hysterics because DAMN IT she didn't specifically tell him to call it in and he SHOULD HAVE ANTICIPATED her insane change of mind! How inconsiderate of him!

I should mention that by this point they're sort of casually dating. Yeah...not a good idea to go off on the guy when he's trying to be helpful, Annemarie. Anyway, turns out the brindled horse is actually Highland Hurrah. They punch walls in anger and that's that. Only this is where Annemarie flies off the deep end. She's not a good manager. Like, at all. Instead of managing she's been spending every waking minute surfing the internet looking for pictures of Highland Hurrah so she can compare him to her brindled horse, becoming further convinced her horse is Hurrah, which leads to this wall hitting episode. And it also leads to her accidentally telling off a high class boarder, who hauls her six high class horses out of there, the farm runs out of hay and shavings (nicely done, Annemarie), she has to buy more expensive hay and shavings to make up for her internet obsession, and they run out of money. Literally. All the paychecks bounce. Then she fires one of the stable hands for getting flirty with Eva and for being Mexican, leading to all of his stable hand cousins quitting. She's on a serious roll.

While this is happening, she's also very busy losing it. Because it's been confirmed that the horse is Highland Hurrah she comes up with a plan to dye all of Hurrah's white stripes. She actually does this. Then she's off thinking rapid fire of ways to get the horse off the farm, and before she can really do this her dad dies. Only he doesn't just die. Oh no. Her parents have been cruising around to different doctors, gathering up all this phenobarbital something or another so they can give him one massive dose...taking him 18 hours to die. While Annemarie has been off acting like a loon, her father has been slowly committing assisted suicide. How's that for closure, Annemarie?

The police come. Everyone gives their statements, and then they discover that Eva has run away. The police come again. Eva turns up in Minneapolis because at this point she'd rather be with Roger, and seeing as how Annemarie has very quickly lost it, I don't blame her. Because I guess that Minnesota requires a court hearing to get divorced, Annemarie has to go back there anyway to get officially divorced, and she's supposedly going to pick her up then. She goes to Minnesota, gets divorced, gets drunk, and Roger tells her he always loved her more. That asshole. Eva still won't come home with her, so she drives back and has a series of epiphanies about her life and so forth. Essentially, she stops being so insane.

Although this is short lived because when she gets home there's a trailer by the barn. Horse thieves are after Hurrah, of course, because this Ian guy is a prat. Annemarie calls 911 and then she and Jean-Claude more or less save the day by kicking ass and taking names. The police come again. For a while Annemarie is suspected of...doing something illegal, but not that anyone really comes to any conclusions there. The police cart Hurrah off to New Mexico, where the trial for Ian will be held, Eva comes home to see the funeral, she inexplicably stays, Jean-Claude decides to leave, but not before almost having sex with Annemarie in a stall for no reason that she initiates and stops, Anniemarie and her mother, who will not be going to jail, I guess, decide to collectively get over it, and then Annemarie and Dan have sex. Yay!

So things finally settle down. Annemarie sells her house in Minneapolis, using the extra money to pay for the damage her irresponsibility wrought on the barn. She becomes the barn's instructor, doing a much better job at that than at management. Eva adopts a filly from Dan's rescue, I guess is still seeing the stable hand boy because he's got a scholarship (therefore he can date her, despite being Mexican or something), and Dan goes out to New Mexico and brings back Hurrah from yet another auction. It ends well. Annemarie finally rides Hurrah, getting over twenty years of trauma and overblown angst.

• I expected more to be said between Annemarie and her father. Instead she spends most of the book dodging him, and then he commits suicide, so I'm not sure how to feel about this. After he's dead, she sort of gets some things off her chest to her mother, but it's not the same, especially considering she harbors such resentment toward being forced to ride.

• The potential Jean-Claude/Annemarie sex. Comes out of nowhere, really has no purpose, and left me pretty damn confused.

• Hurrah's transformation. Hurrah is initially a very damaged horse, with probably some severe psychological trauma. Annemarie's method of getting through to him is just sticking him in a pasture by himself and rolling apples toward him for weeks on end. Right when she's starting to lose it after neglecting to order hay and realizing the barn could possibly be foreclosed on, Hurrah does a 180. Conveniently enough. After that, he's basically a kitten.

• The whole Hurrah plot. Ian Whatshisname set up an accident to make it look like Hurrah had died so he could claim over a million dollars in insurance. Dan mentions it's impossible for this horse to be Hurrah because any insurance agency would have to see the body for a claim to be valid. Instead of killing Hurrah, Ian kills another horse and has its body burned beyond recognition in order to get the claim. So...why not just kill Hurrah? What is the point in keeping him alive, other than it can come back to bite him on the ass? Here, I guess we can explain this off as a debut mistake, but it's a pretty major one. Anyone with enough gall to try to defraud an insurance agency should have enough gall to actually kill the horse in question.

• Annemarie...is not exactly likable. I started off the book liking her, but by the point where she was panicking because she hadn't ordered hay and bedding for weeks on end she started losing massive amounts of points with me. Not to mention I'm not sure how feasible it is to blame surfing the internet because you're obsessed with finding pictures of your horse. And this is how it goes for most of the rest of the book. She wants things and freaks out after she gets them. She mainly overreacts to everything, seems to really actually be racist (I can't explain her freak out when she tries to get her stable hands to come back, resulting in her peeling out of a predominantly Mexican neighborhood because Mexican men are walking up to her car), shirks off responsibility...she's a mess. I think she manages to pull herself back together at the end of the book. Well enough that I started to like her again, but by three quarters through you sort of wish someone would knock her unconscious and take over the story for her.

So, yeah, it's got some problems. I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to think of the sequel, especially given the fact that Annemarie is back as the main character in Flying Changes. It's next on my list, so I'll see how it goes. Otherwise, I still recommend Riding Lessons. It's better than I thought it would be, but it's definitely not in the same league as Water For Elephants. I guess that means Sara Gruen is growing as a writer. Good on you, Sara.

Book Rec: Blue Moon

Blue Moon
by Marilyn Halvorson
Published: 1994, 2004

Can Bobbie Jo take a beat-up old horse and turn her into a champion barrel racer?

The first thing I have to say about this book is that it's 109 pages, and the type is relatively large. Given that the actual story starts on page 7 (this is the first book I've seen that starts the page numbers at the title page), it's actually 102 pages of story. If you're really focused, you can finish this book in a matter of minutes.

It's first person, told from B.J.'s viewpoint and starts at an auction. B.J. has scraped together all her money, some $700, and went to the auction to pick up a yearling that she can train to become a barrel racer. Only when she got to the auction she wound up buying a blue roan mare. She blames this mainly on the mare's color, because she's been obsessed with blue roans ever since reading a picture book way back when. When she goes to pay for the mare, she's ten dollars short and told that if she can't come up with the money the mare will be resold. She races out to find $10, because there are kill buyers at the auction and the mare in question was in some danger of being bought for meat.

While looking for $10, she runs into Cole. Cole is all seventeen and cocky and calls B.J. Blue Jeans, which B.J. absolutely hates. But she grabs him and demands that he give her ten dollars, which after mocking her a little he eventually gives her about eight dollars and change. She rushes back to give the cashier her money and insists that she'll get the rest ($1.25) later. The cashier just rolls his eyes and makes up for it himself, so she's got her horse. Only the horse hates trailers, so as she's the only person there that can get this horse on the trailer, Cole appears again and helps her out. But then he gets fired for walking off his job to help her. Poor Cole. B.J. tells herself that it's not her fault he was being stupid, and takes the horse home to her less than thrilled family.

Her family are dairy farmers, and they need work over the summer. So eventually B.J. gives in to her guilt over getting Cole fired and finds him in school the next day to offer him this government assistance program job or whatnot, because she can't do it given that she's family and all. He takes her up on her offer after initially refusing because he's the proud cowboy type. He also has long, curly blond hair...which I have to blame on the fact that this was first published in 1994. Really, I can't imagine who in their right mind would allow that to happen to their head.

Well, anyway. Cole is also pretty good with horses, so he likes watching B.J. deal with the mare, who is all beaten up and angry, but remarkably quiet and good under saddle. He also won't let B.J. pay him back his $8 and change, insisting he's got a stake in the mare...much to B.J.'s annoyance. He begins to help her out training the mare, which she eventually names Blue Moon because Cole's crippled dad comes over to look at her and says something about how rare a horse like it is. B.J. keeps training Blue Moon for barrel racing, and she and Cole start striking up a friendship that you know is eventually going to turn into a relationship. Only then he has to go start acting weird about Blue Moon and B.J. gets all offended when she thinks he's not totally supportive of their chances at winning. But they get over it and go to the barrel racing event thing, and Blue Moon wins the competition.

On the way back to the dairy farm, they nearly get run off the road and Cole has the chance to tell her why he's been acting so weird. As it happens, his dad used to be a big time horse trainer before they were run off the road by a drunk driver, crippling him and causing him to lose his job. So they only have these three horses and are basically poor, but because his dad used to be someone he knows who Blue Moon is. She's a mare that was stolen from some big name ranch, giving B.J. the chance to do the right thing and call up the previous owners. The previous owners are brilliant and wonderful and they ask B.J. how much she paid for the horse. Then they tell her that she can keep the mare if she's willing to breed Blue Moon to Cole's fantastic stallion so they can have the foal. B.J. is okay with this. The end.

So yeah, like I said it's really short. But the weird thing about it is B.J. and Cole are actually good characters. B.J. is spunky and pretty confident, blowing the Typical Perfect Horse Story Girl out of the water, and I liked Cole despite his horrible hair. I just pretended it didn't exist, and managed to get through the story just fine.

I don't know what I think about the ending, as it flies out of nowhere and seems fairly unrealistic, but that's usually how the girl-might-have-to-give-up-horse-but-doesn't plot goes. All in all, I'd say it's the strongest 109 page horse story I've ever read. I don't know if that's saying something or not, but it's an enjoyable read that will take under an hour.

So...I think I have Dead Heat coming up this week. As well as Chance Meeting by Laura Moore and Ashleigh's Hope, because I have to get through all the Bentley books. I've also decided to start reviewing some television on this blog, mainly because I decided to Google "thoroughbred series" and "wildfire" together to see what happened. Naturally I got reviews for each being compared to each other. So I decided to bite the bullet. If other people think this, obviously I have to finally watch this stupid show, right? So I'm going to watch Wildfire. I'm also going to start watching Caitlyn's Way, mainly because it's syndicated and easy to find completely random episodes. So we'll have some television-related blog entries starting this week, probably.

That's all the news here.