I just don't know, you guys. I don't.

Hercules: A Matter of Trust
by Heather Brooks
2009

Horse friends forever?

Emily Summers is on a mission. A scared little pony has come to Running Horse Ridge, the horse rescue ranch where she lives. Hercules desperately needs a friend, and Emily knows exactly how the lonely pony feels. She is new to Running Horse Ridge herself. But unlike Hercules, she has begun to make new friends, and she has the love of her horse friend forever, Sapphire. Can Emily get Hercules to trust her before he is beyond help?

Horse friend forever? Is that what we're calling this relationship now? Well, whatever. I'm too busy glaring at the cover of this book to care.

A Matter of Trust starts pretty much directly after whatever the first book was called left off. Emily has been at Running Horse Ridge all of maybe five days, she's still being highly annoying about Sapphire, her "horse friend forever," and her Aunt Debby still isn't letting her ride this horse. Cue whining. Emily grooms Sapphire for "several hours" and is trying her damnedest to unravel whatever training Sapphire has absorbed. The horse has a thing with pushing people with his head, and Emily thinks it's fantastic when Sapphire pushes her onto her ass. This just sounds annoying to me, but Emily is OMG DO IT AGAIN HA HA OMG about it. Ugh, it makes me want to smack her. Anyway, while Sapphire is acting like a misbehaved mutt, Debby walks up so she can be disapproving. However, she's got a surprise for Emily. How would Emily like to be in this show that suddenly exists?

Well, Emily is all OMG YES and OMG's some more when Debby asks her to show Sapphire in some halter class or something. Emily is momentarily disappointed that she won't ride Sapphire. Instead she's riding Moondance in a couple of classes, one being a maiden jumping class, and Emily is upset about this maiden terminology despite the fact that she has taken two jumping lessons. In Emily's life, that would be two jumping lessons total. Emily bitches to herself about this, because back at home she showed all the time in dressage! But no one at Running Horse Ridge respects dressage, according to Emily, and for all we know she could be right. It's that sort of childish attitude I've come to expect from these people.

So Emily keeps grooming Sapphire, which has got to be the longest grooming session in the history of horses at this point, and then bitches some more about how her aunt doesn't trust her and her father defers to her aunt too much. Frankly, Emily has done absolutely nothing to warrant being trusted. I mean, in the week she's been at this place she's only broken every rule in the book and thrown a massive fit whenever anyone talks about selling Sapphire. She does take some time to acknowledge that she has acted horribly annoying, but this to a person like Emily is not justification. So Emily decides to step it up a little and goes out to find this pony, Hercules, who is all abused and shell shocked. Nothing happens with the pony that is important until right around the end, so let's ignore him and move on to Emily whining some more.

Debby and her dad, Scott, are working with the foal Emily was given. Holy hell, let's freak out! How can she learn if she's not there to watch? Normally I would agree with this, but this is Emily, so I completely understand their motives. Blah blah, Emily decides she's alone at Running Horse Ridge, blah.

To the show! Things don't go well for Emily, she's too late to show Sapphire in his class, which she realizes is just a giant advertisement for buyers, and then falls off before she can even get to her jumping class and is whisked off to the hospital. She's okay, but falling off has put the fear of jumping in her, and so she goes through most of the second portion of the book refusing to jump, making the excuse that her back hurts too much. She also has a giant falling out with her father, doesn't feel like she fits in at all, and is generally starting to detach from the family. Things are not helped when her father refuses to go home to New Jersey, and has actually given up the lease on the fabulous horse she had there to this never seen arch nemesis, because keeping people in the dark is the best policy!

Eventually Scott and Debby decide to so something and come up with this trail ride that gets everyone together and includes Emily. At some point, I think Hercules gets in trouble and is saved. Really, he wasn't important. Then Debby makes her come to the barn for a lesson, and when Emily gets there she finds out that she's going to ride Sapphire. And then Sapphire practically grows wings and they do everything perfectly.

• She'd been working so hard to prove herself to her aunt, to show she was worthy of being trusted with animals even though she came from a dressage barn... Ha Ha WHAT? Since when does dressage equal incompetence?

• Again, it's actually written well. This is what makes these reviews so painful, because it just so happens that I hate most of the characters. The only two characters I like are Meredith (random boarder at the barn) and Emily's dad.
  

• Despite being well written, the premise still makes me roll my eyes. What sort of crazy family is this? Why would they just move in the same house with these people and live there indefinitely? Really, the only way I can see this working is if Emily's dad happens to be independently wealthy, because that's how he acts.
  

• I would love to see Sapphire sold. It's sort of my new "that would be awesome!" plot that almost never happens.
  

The next book in this series comes out this summer, giving me a nice long break before delving back into this madness.

Running Horse Ridge: In which I discover what being on the fence feels like.

Sapphire: New Horizons
Running Horse Ridge #1
by Heather Brooks
2009

So, yeah. The Super Bowl. While I'm fairly sure that most of my city is falling down drunk and committing some ill advised arson right now, I'd like to take a time out to say how awesome Pittsburgh is. Not Brad Townsend level of awesome, but pretty awesome.

Okay, to the book.

Home is where your horse is

Emily Summers does not want to go to Oregon. Why would she want to leave her friends and Rhapsody, her perfect dressage horse, to move to a horse rescue ranch all the way across the country?

Then Emily discovers that at Running Horse Ridge, she'll be living her dream of riding and caring for horses 24/7, and after she meets the roguish black stallion named Sapphire, she feels she's found a true friend. There's just one catch: Sapphire is at Running Horse Ridge to be retrained and sold. Has Emily met the horse of her dreams only to lose him?

I finished this book a while ago by now, because since then I've spent restless hours thinking about it. I thought about it through the night, through work, through the freaking Super Bowl, and all of this made me angry. This book has hijacked a lot of my time, and I really didn't see that coming. I mean, look at it. Look at that cover. I hate the cover, okay? Who in their right mind expects a book to be good when they're met with this cover? It's got a nice, pretty banner and absolutely no substance. In fact, the photo of that horse comes very close to offending me because it smacks of laziness. Someone went to the trouble of creating that banner, which I think is great, and then...that photo. That photo.

Okay, let's do this. Emily and her dad are driving to Oregon because his father recently died and they need to be at the funeral. Emily never met her grandfather, so she's spending her time dwelling on the fact that this horse she rides back in New Jersey (Rhapsody, who is sublime and refuses to drink from his water bucket if it is not absolutely pristine) is very probably going to be ridden in an upcoming competition by the probably blond female antagonist. So Emily is battling with her raging jealousy about this, bemoaning this stupid funeral for a man she never met.

Then this horse jumps out into the road and he looks exactly like Rhapsody, conveniently enough. That's all it takes, and instantly Emily is in love. Her cousin shows up and carts the horse, Sapphire, back to Running Horse Ridge, which Emily only now seems to start registering as a stable. So they get there and Emily immediately runs off to the stable to bond with Sapphire. The next day, Emily's aunt Debby gives her a riding lesson. Her very first jumping lesson, actually, because Emily is a dressage freak. I know. Color me shocked. Emily is determined to eventually ride Sapphire over jumps, but Debby refuses to let her ride him yet because she's saving him to sell and he's not done training...all perfectly logical. Then Emily accidentally lets Sapphire out of his stall and he runs off again before the funeral.

Everyone panics, but the horse is found and all is okay. Until Emily goes back to the stable early and decides to ride Sapphire without anyone's permission while they're still at the funeral. As you can imagine, Sapphire goes nuts out in the field and dumps Emily, who sprains her ankle and has to wait to be saved by Debby and her dad. They find her, and Debby's husband, Rick, carries her back...but during all of this they find an abused horse off in the woods.

This horse happens to be from a stable that I guess no one ever knew about. Emily discovers the place with her dad, who goes completely insane on the owner of the stable, attacks him, and then locks him in a stall. Then they call Debby et al, who arrive and completely panic. Like...there is running and screaming and...you'd think that there was some maniac shooting a gun indiscriminately at passers by, that's how completely crazy everyone was acting. The cops eventually let them take the horses after the abusive owner attempts to attack one of the cops, and so all forty animals go to Running Horse Ridge.

Despite all of this activity, Debby has not forgotten about Emily's shenanigans with Sapphire. She asks Emily about it and Emily insists that her accident was a one time thing, blah blah blah, and Debby basically emotionally bitch slaps her and says, "I'm sorry you feel that way." Then she bans her from seeing Sapphire. Emily feels the pain of injustice! But she just wanted to ride him in the open without supervision after only knowing the horse for a day, and she only sort of accidentally injured herself and the horse, and she only wants to own him and Rhapsody, and if she can't have him there's no way Debby can sell him to someone else...oh my God, I wanted someone to stop beating around the bush and tell his kid to shove it. She is a VISITOR. For all she knows, she's out of there after the weekend is up. Who the hell is she to walk in there and start bitching about her relatives selling a horse that is theirs to sell, especially when she's never met any of these people and she is going back to NEW JERSEY. Never did anyone say they were staying there for a long period of time. Never. It just completely astonished me, actually.

So more bitching and whining happens about Sapphire, and Debby bitches at Emily some more. Emily tries desperately to prove how responsible she is by taking care of the abused horses, and Debby seems to not care that Emily is working so hard. Then Emily's dad announces that he's bought all forty of the horses (because somehow this will help the stable? I don't get this, because it's not like the stable owns the horses.) All of them except Sapphire! Emily is frustrated some more, Debby doesn't care some more, and then this abused mare gives birth, which somehow means Emily has to ride Sapphire, breaking all of Debby's rules for the sake of the mare. Debby tells Emily that her dad is giving the foal to Emily (of course!) and Emily somehow proves that she is not a whiny brat and Debby decides that she won't sell Sapphire yet, just as Emily's dad decides very conveniently to stay at the stable a little longer to help get the place out of financial distress (because it is, of course...that goes without saying.)

• Emily likes dressage. Again, this completely amazed me. Also, it's apparent that whoever wrote this (as I'm still not convinced that Heather Brooks is real...her little author blurb in this book is way too "she loves to write and rescue horses on the weekends!" to be real) knows what they're talking about. I actually followed what Emily was doing when she was riding this horse in her first lesson with Debby. I comprehended. I was amazed that I comprehended. I sort of grudgingly liked this book for being comprehensible in this area.
  

• The little details in this book are pretty awesome. Right before Emily's dad throws a fit and attacks the abusive owner guy, we learn that the guy is eating a red Popsicle. Right here I was even further incensed because I could just see all of this happening. The red Popsicle made me like this book.

• But seriously, I don't want to like this book. Actually, I don't like this book at all at many, many points. Most of this hinges on Emily. She is a self-absorbed, irresponsible whiner. At one point, she seriously hopes that her father will buy both Sapphire and Rhapsody, and while that's a logical hope for a thirteen-year-old, it's also not a realistic hope, and any thirteen-year-old will own up to that without being pushed. Emily doesn't exactly admit that to herself.

• Plus, she DOESN'T LIVE THERE. She's known all of these people for a grand total of a few days. And she's throwing fits over a damn horse she has no slight right to throw a fit over.

• But still. Like...this book took time to discuss Emily's relationship with her father, her confusion over never having had a cohesive family that did family type things. It captures her complete failure to adjust to her relatives. It was weirdly good in parts. It went far beyond my expectations in several areas, which made its illogical parts so much more irritating.
  

My general consensus here is that I liked it and I really didn't at the same time. I am not happy about this, because I didn't want to read the rest of the books in this series. Now I'm afraid I'll have to.