Pam's Bitchy BFF Adventure

I have no lead in, let's just get right to it, shall we?



Pony Camp vol. 2
Pam's Trail Riding Adventure
by Susan Saunders

The trail can be a scary place to ride...

Everyone at Pony Camp is looking forward to the trail ride - everyone except Pam.

Pam's terrified because her slow, steady horse is hurt, and she has to ride Dandy - the wildest horse in the stable.

Pam needs help from her best friend, Jessie, but Jessie won't help her. She's mad at Pam for being nice to nasty Lisa Harris.

But on the trail, it's Lisa Harris who needs help - and Pam is the only one who can save her. Will Pam be brave enough to rescue Lisa?

Jeez, this synopsis is even more wrong that the first one was. Let us count the ways...

In this book we get a change from Jessie's POV to Pam Werner's. This is not the relief you might be hoping for, as Jessie is still a ginormous beyotch, but we'll get to that. Pam here is not too thrilled with Pony Camp, but being a weak willed thing, she can't say no to Jessie. So in spite of having nightmares about riding runaway horses, she hauls her ass to camp every day, not telling Jessie that she is, in fact, quite nervous around thousand pound animals, because that would make her a total wimp and she would lose her special title of "Jessie's Bitch." Yep.

Anyway, Pam's horse, Gracie, the sleepy chestnut mare, somehow does herself an injury, and has to rest for two weeks. Her replacement is Dandy, who everyone treats like Horse Jesus or something. He's an Arabian show horse and he's- I quote- "the color of coffee ice cream, with a vanilla mane and tail and a white diamond on his forehead."

Lisa Harris happens to walk by and instantly gets all hot for Dandy, trying to bully her way to being his rider. When she finds out Pam will be riding Dandy, she says the best (and by that I mean worst) line she has in the whole trilogy, "What a total waste of excellent horseflesh!" WTF? Who talks like that?

So after an awkward first lesson on Dandy, Pam comes to find out that her mother has invited Lisa's BFF Sally to spend the night. This apparently is the worst thing ever, because Pam is all upset, Jessie gets pissy at Pam, and Lisa is out to get Pam. Wow. Top it all off with news that the camp is going on their first trail ride, it is officially the worst day of Pam's life.

We get more of Jessie being a bitch for a while, because obviously Pam wants to be BFFs with Sally, and everyone knows you can only be friends with Jessie. It is a full. time. job, people. Then... the sleepover.

Pam and Sally both confess to being afraid of horses, and get along pretty well, until the next morning when they arrive at camp and Sally runs back to Lisa. This is apparently all Jessie needs to forgive Pam for her terrible deeds. At least until Lisa shows up and tells Jessie that Pam is scared of horses, and Jessie's a big meanie face for making her be there. Jessie, what else, gets pissy at Pam and storms off. Lisa then informs Pam that Dandy will runaway with her on the trail.

Pam confesses to her instructor, Diana, that she's afraid of horses, and terrified that Dandy will bolt with her on the trail ride. Diana points out the absurdity of the camp buying a runaway and putting a beginner on him, then points out that Pam has gained a lot of confidence around horses since first starting out. She then teaches Pam about horse body language, which somehow makes Pam feel all better. She even grows a pair and tells Lisa to get out of her face, regaining a tiny amount of approval from Jessie. They make up and it's all beautiful and whatnot.

So what happens to Lisa? You know, the synopsis was all, "Will Pam be brave enough to rescue Lisa?" The answer is no. Not that Pam isn't brave enough, it's just that she herself doesn't rescue Lisa from anything. Lisa's horse lays down to roll in the stream, and Lisa's instructor pulls her off her horse before he rolled over on her. And Pam, Jessie, Maxine, and Peter ride away laughing about it. The end.

Things of note:

Jessie is one of the bitchiest characters I've EVER read, and in horse literature that is saying something. We are talking bitchier than Cindy you guys. The only thing worse is how Pam bends over and takes it.

I'm not sure why Peter exists. He did literally nothing in this book, or any of them really. It's a trilogy that focuses of the three girls, Peter doesn't get his own book, he barely gets any story at all.

Two down, one to go...

Hold on to your butts as Jessie Takes the Reins

Oh my God the Pony Camp trilogy. Just... my. God. Remember those books you read as a kid, the ones you loved but gave away for some reason, leaving them to ferment in your memories until you know you know that book, but can't exactly remember it? These are those books for me. I swear I must have had them damn near memorized at one point, but they hit the table at some garage sale or another. As I was putzing around the interwebs I unintentionally rediscovered them. Of course I HAD to order them. I mean, the nostalgia!!



Pony Camp vol. 1
Jessie Takes the Reins
by Susan Saunders

Will Jessie ever learn how to ride?

Jessie has always wanted to learn how to ride a horse. Now she's going to pony camp to meet the beautiful horse of her dreams. But Ranger isn't what Jessie expected.

He's spotted. He's stubborn. He's short.

And he doesn't like Jessie any more than she likes him!

Jessie wanted to be a great rider overnight. But learning to ride Ranger is really hard. What's worse, snobby Maxine from Jessie's third-grade class is a great rider who thinks she knows everything. Will Jessie need help from bossy Maxine to make her dream come true?

That's a long ass synopsis for a 90 page book, and it's not really all that accurate. Awesome.

So eight year old - I MEAN EIGHT AND A HALF since she mentions it twice on the first page (God it's first person narrative) - Jessie Johnson is a horse fanatic who's going to pony camp (no really?). She's also an idiot, but I'm getting ahead of myself. She's "read every horse book in the library, so I'm an expert on horses."

Jessie and her BFF Pam are off to this day camp where Jessie KNOWS you guys that she's going from beginner to expert in like five minutes, because she knows EVERYTHING about horses. Yep. She has wet dreams over the huge black thoroughbred that will be her magikal steed, named Thunder or something equally cliche.

Anyway, Jessie and Pam and put in a group with a fat boy named Peter, who is fat and messy and has a stupid haircut and eats candy all the time and ISN'T JESSIE'S NARRATIVE A GEM YOU GUYS? As well as Maxine who is neat and tidy and a good student and bad at sports and therefore a huge bitch and Jessie and Pam hate her OMG. Seriously, we get a lot of info about why Maxine is hate worthy. I mean, when Jessie hears Maxine has been taking riding lessons for a few months and is a natural, Jessie nearly shits her pants over how much that CAN'T be true.

So THEN Jessie meets the horse she's been assigned, an Appaloosa named Ranger. And apparently a spotted horse is a world ending situation, because while a black horse or a white horse would be an appropriate mount for little miss bitch, I mean bitch, I MEAN JESSIE - a black and white horse is OMG ugly kill it with fire.

But Ranger has the sense to be unimpressed with Jessie as well, and when Jessie utterly fails at EVERYTHING Jessie declares the HORSE has an attitude problem.

But if there isn't enough drama for you yet, we get introduced to our main antagonists, Kevin and Lisa Harris, and Lisa's BFF Sally. They're pretty much carbon copies of every horse book antagonist EVER. Except they really don't do anything in this book except trash talk. More on that later.

So the first time Jessie get's in the saddle she closes her eyes and lifts into a jump position and Ranger has the GALL to MOVE HIS HEAD A LITTLE BIT WHILE STANDING STILL. Jessie is ill prepared to handle such a wild movement and is pulled out of the saddle and onto his neck. Clearly this horse is out to get her. The first time they try a trot Jessie falls off and demands a new horse because Ranger is horse Satan or something.

So then there's some more smack talking from the Harris siblings that culminates in a swimming race which our "heroes" win. I fail to see the point.

And finally, Jessie happens to see an older rider taking Ranger over some jumps and gets all hot for the horse and decides to keep riding him instead of another horse, which Ranger is no doubt thrilled over. And we are treated to a saccharine ending in which Jessie comes to realize that she IS in fact a beginner. Gasp.

Things of note:

None of our four are typical horse book protagonists. Jessie and Pam are good students who love playing sports of all kinds. Maxine is very neat and tidy. Peter is... um... well, he doesn't really count.

The synopsis led me to believe that Maxine was the antagonist. And Pam and Jessie go on and on about what a bitch she is before she actually shows up in the book. Their proof of her bitchiness is: she's clean, bad at sports, and quiet. From the moment she appears she obviously has low self esteem, tries hard to be nice and helpful, and never comes across as condescending despite the fact that she OBVIOUSLY is a more knowledgeable and experienced rider.

Jessie is a bitch to her own BFF, getting mad at her for asking dumb questions and getting impatient with her for being nervous around horses. OUR HERO YOU ALL.

So obviously this thing doesn't coast on nostalgia, but then again as I read it I was reminded of the fact that I thought Jessie was a know it all bitch even when I myself was a young horse crazy child, so there you go.

I read this book and all I got was this empty feeling.

A Horse of Her Own
by Annie Wedekind
Published: June 2008

Annie Wedekind is a new author, just experiencing the first blush of publication and enjoying the thrill of seeing her words in print. Congratulations, Annie! Your hard work (I presume you worked hard, but whatever) has payed off. What's more, you have a very cute website. I admire all of that.

But it's not going to stop me from recapping this book to the standards I usually reserve for Thoroughbred. (Annie, if you've read Thoroughbred, don't worry. I love it and will be the first to defend it. Think of this as a very positive situation for you.)

Summary:

Fourteen-year-old Jane Ryan has always dreamed of having a horse of her own—but so long as she gets to ride her favorite school horse, Beau, at Sunny Acres farm, she’s content. And this is the summer she means to try out for the advanced riding class.

But just as camp begins, Jane receives heartbreaking news about Beau. She loses, not just her favorite horse, but also her chance to ride in the end-of-summer competition. When her trainer asks for her help with an out-of-control chestnut warmblood, Lancelot, a newcomer to the barn, she has no choice but to say yes.

There’s another new addition to the farm: Ben Reyes, the grandson of the barn's manager. As Jane struggles to go on without Beau, and to make Lancelot the great horse she believes him to be, her feelings for Ben, her relationships with the privileged group of girls she rides with, and her painful, joyous road to self-discovery all lead to a heart-pounding conclusion that is truly a new beginning. Only Jane’s faith in Lancelot, and her own rediscovered skill and strength, can see her through the hard journey toward a horse of her own.

The Kirkus Review calls this "probably the most honest horse book since National Velvet." I have a huge problem with this statement for three reasons. The first among them is that National Velvet was published in 1935. Am I really to expect that the world has been without an "honest" horse book for 73 years? Secondly, this isn't an honest horse book. This is basically Camp Saddlebrook and Melanie's Last Ride combined. That's right. Think on that for a minute. Thirdly, I'm pretty sure the Kirkus Review only mentions National Velvet because this book shamelessly references National Velvet's plot as being similar to its own.

I'm going to focus first on the author for a minute. Annie is originally from Louisville, where she learned how to ride on a farm similar to the farm she depicts in her novel. There's also a note in the back of the book about how the setting of her novel is so very similar to the setting of her youth (as in, it is the same), but don't worry all you people who knew her when she was young. She didn't write you into her novel, or anything. Not to worry! Oh, except for that Beau horse (which is pronounced "Boo," so why they didn't just spell it Boo is beyond me), who I guess existed at one point.

Yeah, so from all of that are we immediately suspicious that our main character is going to be a Mary Sue? Well, let's find out, shall we?

Meet Jane Ryan. She's the daughter of two college professors and lives in downtown Louisville, which therefore makes her unworthy to all the other suburban-raised kids in her riding class. Except for Robin, who is rich and suburban-raised herself, and somehow manages to be accepted by the rich snobs while dutifully playing Jane's best friend. The rich snobs are Alyssa and Jennifer, who have snubbed Jane for about five solid years. Then there's Jessica, Alyssa and Jennifer's third portion of their triumvirate of bitchiness. Jessica drifts back and forth, mostly loyal to Alyssa, but she sometimes throws Jane a brief glimpse of hope that she'll be included in their clique, which mainly just confuses Jane. Jane, you see, so desperately wants to belong.

Now, the thing here is that everyone has their own horse except for Jane. Jane is painfully aware of this fact. Riding school horses, you see, is so very terrible and Jane so wants her own horse and you see the issue, I'm sure. In the early goings of the book she begs her father one last time for her very own horse and he tells her again that they just can't afford it (yet they've been sending her to a private school up through 8th grade...because they are college professors and public school is not good or challenging enough for their socially awkward daughter). Jane responds by bursting into tears.

Jane just takes this melodrama and applies it to her determination to get into the Advanced I class on Beau, her trusty school horse. During their last lesson before their instructor, Susan, decides on their placement for camp, the other evil bitchy girl, Emily, arrives with a brand new horse. It is the fantastical chestnut gelding Lancelot. Only he's crazy. And Emily sort of beats the crap out of him with her crop. And now he hates crops. Of course he does. So Susan sticks Emily in Advanced II and thus Jane gets to be in Advanced I. Camp starts. This is all fairly uneventful until Jane runs into the boy of her dreams, Ben. Only she spends most of this meeting being even more socially awkward than normal and talking to animals. Poor, poor Jane.

In the early goings of the camp, instructor Susan has the Advanced I girls go over this cross country course, having them all go over this crazy big hedge jump without really informing them that this jump is involved in the course. Ben is hidden in the trees to make sure they all go over this jump, and only two actually do -- Jane and Jessica. Alyssa and Jennifer opt out of the jump entirely, getting reprimanded by Susan as they hold firm in their belief that they were being responsible by refusing to jump such an obstacle. I can't really say what the whole point was of this giant hedge jump other than Susan expecting everyone to do as she commands, but whatever. After this reprimand, Susan goes and informs Jane that Beau was sold to one of the younger kids and so Jane has no mount. There's some talk about the owners of the barn deciding to get another horse for the stable, but this never actually materializes. I kept expecting someone to tell Jane not to worry because a new horse is coming along, but no one does.

You want to know why? No one tells Jane about the new horse because Emily has thrown a temper tantrum and left camp, dumping Lancelot in a stall with a bucket of grain. Lancelot colics, and while Jane is all moping around in the middle of the night, she runs into the drama in the barn with Ben and his grandfather, Jose, who are both taking care of the panicked gelding. Only Jose decides to put the horse back in the stall to let him roll because that's supposed to be just fine? Apparently it's okay to let a colicking horse roll all over the place and the only danger to a horse in this condition is that they might smack a leg against the sides of their stall? Is there some reasoning behind why Annie is rewriting EVERYTHING I've ever known about treating colic? Horse people, help me out here.

So, after saving Lancelot's life, Jane becomes the gelding's personal Jesus. She walks out to the horse in his paddock and offers him grass and he's all "grass!" and lets her lead him around. Everyone is shocked. I...am not, I've got to say. So then Susan let's it be known that she bought Lancelot from Emily's parents and she wants Jane to ride him.

Let's just get this out now: Jessica has already told Jane that the other girls don't like her because they're intimidated by her. Also, it's pretty apparent that Jane is the best rider there ever was in the history of this barn. Also, Alyssa calls her Ms. Goody, and she's right. Jane is a perfect goody-goody. She may be a dirty mess who wears high-waisted jeans and Keds from 1986, but just because she has no fashion sense doesn't make her any less of a perfect brat. After this Ms. Goody moment, it becomes screamingly apparent that Jane is just that. And it's highly annoying.

So, right when Jane starts harboring these feeling for Ben, Jessica comes along and swoops him up. She also transforms from a somewhat sympathetic and interesting character into a two-dimensional nut case who shows two emotions: jealousy and pissiness. Therefore the main antagonist switches from Alyssa to Jessica in the bat of an eye.

Meanwhile, Jane continues to ride Lancelot and he continues to accidentally beat the crap out of her. Jose and Susan get into this random yelling match about how Jane shouldn't be riding Lancelot at all because he's not hers and she'll just get all heartbroken when she has to be taken off of him again? Like...suck it up, Jane. And who are these people to really care whether or not she has a horse? And where is this horse the owners were buying and moving to the barn? Huh? HUH?

Anyway, Ben and Jane start taking Lancelot on trail rides and Jessica is not pleased about this. At one point she strolls up to them in Lancelot's stall and informs Ben she's going to go swimming. She proceeds to strip her shirt off to show him how wonderful her breasts look in a red bikini. Jane just blushes again and realizes she'll never have a chest like Jessica's. This is a pretty clunky area, obviously.

So, let me see here. Let's just get to the main point. Jane decides she's going to ride in the end of camp show with Lancelot, only she's going to ride in Advanced I. Because Lancelot is kind of a lunatic, Jane winds up doing more Advanced II work with him because no one wants Lancelot to fly into a cross country jump and kill them both. Only Jane is not satisfied with this. So she has Ben spy on Advanced I classes for her, and he gets her the jumping tests for the show, and Jessica is further pissed off. Ben finally tells Jane that he had told Jessica about the hedge jump from the beginning of camp, with expectations that Jessica would tell everyone else in Advanced I. Well, Jessica didn't tell Jane. Wow, shocking. So Ben and Jessica get into a fight about Jane.

Eventually, Jane falls off of Lancelot again and injures her shoulder. Fighting through the pain, she enters the Advanced I show anyway and wins. Afterward Susan gives Lancelot to Jane (we all saw that coming, right?), but only after they all discover that Lancelot isn't actually the horse they all thought he was. Gasp! Who is this horse? Where did Emily's dad get him?

Well, those questions aren't answered because Annie is working on a sequel. I'm going to predict right now that the sequel is going to be about Lancelot's real background and then there's going to be a plotline that will concern Jane possibly having to give him up, but in the end she gets to keep him. Right? If that's not exactly on the money, I'm sure it's a variation on the same theme.

• There are two things that started to annoy me in their repetition: blushing and calling everything crazy. At one point someone yells something about "that crazy horse! That's crazy!" Like...there are synonyms for crazy. Lots of them. Also, the blushing. Jane may be shy, but I don't think it's possible to blush that often. It happened nearly three times per chapter. There are 21 chapters. That's too much.

• I appreciated Robin the most in the entire book. I expected her to fall into the typical secondary character meant to solely support the main character's brilliance, but she does have an little plotline of her own. The unfortunate thing about her plotline is how lame it is. Her problem is she doesn't want to compete, which pretty much boils down to the repeated insistence that no one is as good as Jane.

• Annie was trying for some humor in this book. You could really tell she wanted readers to laugh at the antics and the characters constantly lapsing into British accents, but it felt really forced and unfunny to me. Actually, Robin and Jane always seemed to act like they were drunk whenever they were together, which was probably not what Annie was going for at all.

• Beau is sold to a ten-year-old girl named Megan, giving Jane the opportunity to become Megan's mentor. There was a lot of sappiness that was not needed at all here. About half of Megan's scenes could have been cut entirely and Jane's character would have been stronger for it.

• Jane never does anything wrong when she's riding. In fact, she always does everything right. What's more, she only falls off during accidents involving twigs or things that happen to slap at Lancelot. Therefore, the only reason Lancelot is dumping Jane is because Emily is such a bitch. Really.

• At the show, Alyssa and Jennifer's older brothers show up. Jane's older sister, Lily, also shows up. Immediately I just knew the brothers were going to take an interest in Jane and Lily. What happened? Oh, they totally stared at them. It was a wonderful opportunity for me to feel smug.

Here's my final verdict on Jane. She's not a Mary Sue. A bit of a self-insert, she may well be, but mostly she just suffers from being a typical main character in a typical young adult horse story. She's the girl that doesn't have everything, doesn't own a horse and desperately wants one, works hard, is a "natural" at riding, is almost too down to earth, gets beaten up severely and rises above her injuries, and wins her show/class/whatever before randomly getting a horse of her own in the end. God, that girl and plot gets annoying eventually.

So, Annie, I'm sorry to say, but "most honest horse book since National Velvet" this story is not, because it's basically every juvenile horse story I've read since January...and that's a lot of them. It's a good first try, and I will most assuredly read the sequel, because I mainly want to see if I'm right about the plot. Otherwise, A Horse of Her Own is about as original as its title. Which, considering I already reviewed Joanna Campbell's A Horse of Her Own, is not very original at all.