Romantic comedies need to happen more often in horse books.

The Gift Horse
by Jami Davenport

Never look a gift horse in the mouth?

City boy Carson receives a temperamental gift horse complete with strings attached: transform a run-down horse farm into a showplace and a disorganized horse trainer bent on self-sabotage into a winner. His horse trainer has her own agenda, one that puts her life and his heart on the line.

I pretty much automatically love a person with a sense of humor, and going by The Gift Horse, I have a feeling Jami Davenport is my sort of person. Maybe not Barbara Dunlop sort of hilarious, but damn amusing in a way that doesn't involve desert raiders and a character's belatedly realizing they don't know how to read a language like, say, Arabic. For me, this is fantastic, because if we're going to head straight back into romance on this blog, there had best be some comedy. It's the only thing that saves me from rolling my eyes.

Well, anyway, to the plot. Sam is a disheveled mess who has recently returned home from Germany after a harrowing experience with a barn fire that inconveniently occurred at the barn she just happens to be returning to. Carson is the son of the owner. Carson is also neat and orderly and what some might call boring. At least he's good looking. And Sam is at least sort of pretty (if not beautiful) under all that dirt. Through family plotting that I am in no way going to get into, Carson becomes the half-owner of Gabbie, the dressage horse Sam hopes to ride into the upper echelons of the sport. But then her old trainer shows up, and all this crap starts to happen that drags up her past with the aforementioned barn fire, and a plot from Days of our Lives suddenly springs forth.

New friendships are tested! Old friendships are (really) tested! Gabbie keeps throwing herself at Carson, who keeps rebuffing her! The barn manager keeps slinking around, taking detailed notes on everyone! Everyone thinks this is very weird! Also, why are these horses suddenly going lame? Who stands to benefit? Will Sam learn how to brush her hair and launder her clothes in a timely manner? Will Carson loosen up a little and stop storing his underwear in tidy rows in his dresser? Will Gabbie ever get Carson to reciprocate her feelings, or will she be doomed to her own species for the rest of her natural life? The drama! The drama.

Okay, here are the two main things that I loved about this book. The first: Sam and Carson's first sexy encounter occurs in a "bordello on wheels." The bed may or may not "whirl around like a carnival ride." I kind of think that was metaphor working its magic, but I like to think of it as literal. The second: people spend most of the book thinking Juan the barn manager has lost, literally, all of his sense, because he will not stop acting like a private investigator who is very obvious at his job. This, however, is an act. By the end everyone does a collective who is this guy? and I fell in love with him...just a little bit. And I really love how he's like, "I'm out, bitches!" and just randomly leaves and everyone's too in awe of his awesomeness to really question it. Juan, you so deserve your own romance novel!

Anyway. I liked Sam's inability to function, while still demanding she can function just fine. Most romance novels seem to hinge on the girl being the most amazing girl ever and the boy being the most manly boy ever, and this book seems more focused on the two continually surprising each other, which would be great if it wasn't the characters moving away from their quirks and into the romance novel formula. For instance, as it turns out Sam can clean up nicely! And Carson can actually play sports, evaluate an engine, and fix fences! That said, the book does go the opposites attract route, and then does follow up on the suggestion that they'll never work out, like, twice. So that was interesting. Another fun aspect is the point of view changes. Every so often, Gabbie gets to step up and tell it like it is...despite not really knowing anything because she's a horse who cannot speak English. Gabbie makes the book and refreshes the old romance formula. Whenever Carson and Sam get sort of tiring, Gabbie is always portrayed perfectly. And Juan never gets old. Obviously.

So, other than a few small things and some typos (unfortunately for most of the population, "shoe-in" is a misspelling) I enjoyed it.

And I totally want Juan to get his own book. Please, Jami? Pretty please?

(The Gift Horse will be available in print at Amazon and B&N June 2009.)

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.

The Long Shot: Ice cream can and will ruin everyone's lives.

The Long Shot (TV, 2004)

Can a Blind Horse and an Injured Rider Make a Winning Combination?
Newly relocated to California Annie Garrett is left by her hot-tempered husband with a young daughter and a horse to support so she needs someplace to live and to work. She finds both at the stable where Mary Lou O Brian hires her and barn manager Guido Levits befriends her but the biggest challenge for Annie has yet to come.

Apparently whoever wrote this blurb does not believe in commas. That, or Amazon doesn't believe in commas, as that's where I lifted this from. Anyway, this is a Hallmark made-for-TV movie, so I warn you now about the sappiness. Also, seeing as how this has Julie Benz in it, I keep expecting her to scream "God doesn't want you!" before she has a nervous breakdown and kills someone. So sappiness coming from Julie Benz just really confused me.

Starting out, Annie (Benz) is getting ready to move to California, where her husband has found work as a farm manager or something like that. Annie is getting her horse, Tolo, from the stable she's been riding at since she was a little girl, back when she had a sister (Kate) and all was right with the world. Her old lesson instructor sits her down to ask her if she's really 100% positive that she's making the right decision, tells her flat out that her husband is an asshole, and gives her the name of a woman he knows in California if she needs help/work/a better mother figure. Touched, Annie says her goodbyes and goes home to say goodbye to her parents. Here we learn that her dad is the one Annie most connects with, while her mother is frigid and unfeeling toward Annie after events transpired that made birthdays forbidden in their household.

You see, long ago Annie forgot to pick up ice cream for their father's birthday. Kate had to go get the ice cream, and wound up getting in a car wreck instead. Her mother inadvertently laid all the blame at Annie's feet because had Annie just gotten the damned ice cream like she was supposed to none of this would have happened. So Annie's dad gives her a gas card and some cash, and as soon as she gets in the car with Asshole Husband, he asks her for the cash he figures her dad gave her. She gives him the gas card instead. Good going, Annie.

Annie also has a daughter, Taylor, whose only problem in life is that she's moving to a state where it hardly snows. Don't worry, Taylor's about to get a boatload of problems shoved her way, because as soon as they get to California, Asshole Husband finds out that there is no job waiting for him, so he abandons Annie, Taylor, and their horse. Annie has to find a place to stick Tolo, and because they have no money for the hotel anymore they wind up staying in a stall with the horse at some equestrian center place or whatever. Then she runs into this Mary Lou person her ex-instructor told her about, and they chat and blah blah blah she lands a job with Mary Lou, like we all knew she would, only it was a long, convoluted, hemming and hawing trip to that destination. Okay.

So she's working for Mary Lou. At this point, she's got to tell Taylor that Asshole Husband isn't coming back, resulting in child antics. She runs back to the equestrian center, where Asshole Husband happens to be working, and he abandons his daughter again. The nice vet, John, finds her and all is well. Then Mary Lou starts working on Annie, insisting she enter some competition thing with Tolo. Tolo is a dressage horse. This is a dressage movie. They enter a dressage competition and win, qualifying for some Grand Prix event that will be important later. Only after the event we discover that Tolo is blind (all of a sudden). Crap, you guys. Nice Vet John comes along and gives Annie her options. She decides to teach Tolo how to go on with his life by sticking a bell on Red, Mary Lou's dressage horse, and making them best buddies so Tolo can follow Red around. I have no idea if this is a sound method for teaching a blind horse how to do anything, but there you have it. The horse is taught. Nice Vet John and Annie sort of start to make eyes at each other (this idea is made even further obvious by people giggling all the time when they talk about them), but she is married and will just have to be friends for right now. He's okay with that because he is Nice.

Then she falls off a ladder and breaks her ankle or something. Her frigid mother shows up, intending to take them back home, but Annie perseveres and stays after they blow up over how her mom always remembered how may ribbons Kate won and doesn't seem to care about Annie. Later on, Frigid Mom tells Mary Lou that of course she knows how many ribbons Annie won (well, why didn't you just tell your daughter rather than sit there and look offended, you crazy woman?) and Mary Lou tells her about how her daughter died of a drug overdose when she was 17 and at least Frigid Mom has a daughter, so shut up about your stupid problems all ready.

Meanwhile, Annie doesn't want to ride because she doesn't think she's ready. So she keeps retraining Tolo before Mary Lou lays down the gauntlet on her, making Annie feel it's necessary to test her newly healed leg by riding Red. Alone. At night. It's like all these horse story characters have the same stupid thought process. Who's going to be there if you wind up not being able to ride, Annie? Huh?

Anyway, the most that happens is that she discovers she can't post correctly, so she fashions herself a splint and wins another competition on Red. Then the bank comes calling for $8,000, because Tolo was used as collateral for a loan. So they're going to come along and take Tolo if Annie can't come up with the money. She fixes this situation by going to the Grand Prix event she qualified for on Tolo and Red. Only then Asshole Husband has to show up and try to tempt her to go to Virginia with him, only the car is broken down and blah blah blah, which results in a fight where he shoves her and tries to cripple Red. Only Red beats him up and security comes and Annie makes him sign the divorce papers instead of charging him for assault. Nicely done, Annie.

Then Nice Vet John has to tell Annie that Red is injured and cannot be ridden in the show, so she rides Tolo, the Miraculous Blind Horse, and wins. She gets to keep Tolo, everyone has a birthday party for Annie and Taylor (they are allowed now, you see), her parents show up and Frigid Mom officially gets over it, and Annie tells Nice Vet John they can be friends and kiss. Joy! And Taylor gets two coolers full of crushed ice. The movie ends during a "snowball fight," which is really just everyone throwing crushed ice at each other.

So, yeah, it's corny and sappy and factually inconsistent and a Hallmark movie. I still liked it. Now if only I can get my library copy of The Derby Stallion to work. I know you all want to see Zac Efron fall off of horses, right? I mean, I do. I'm also working on A Summer of Horses, but after the fourth time someone said "Ye Gods" in the first two chapters, I determined that it was a book that warranted note taking. So, all I can say is, prepare yourselves.

Book Rec: Another Kind of Cowboy

Another Kind of Cowboy
by Susan Juby
Published: 2007

I'll state first that I liked this book. If ever there was a book deserving of a serious recommendation, this is that book. In fact, I'm not sure I can come up with a suitably snarky review for the blog, and I don't really even want to give up spoilers. What is wrong with me?

Well. Here's the summary:

For Alex Ford, dressage is an oasis. In the stable, he can slip into his riding pants, shed the macho cowboy image, and feel like himself for a change.

For Cleo O'Shea, dressage is a fresh start. She's got a new boarding school, absentee parents, and, best of all, no one to remember her past. . . .

They're an unlikely pair. Cleo's looking for love, but Alex has a secret he's not ready to give up, and a flirtation with Cleo is the last thing on his mind. But you can't find romance before you know real friendship, and sometimes the last person you'd ever think of as a friend ends up being the one you need the most.

If this was a Thoroughbred book, Christina would be having an aneurysm. The whole thing is about dressage, obviously. Alex has been obsessed with it since he was a kid, and Cleo spent her first jumping lesson sobbing. I appreciated that, actually.

The brief rundown is this: we've got two main characters. The book skips around between Alex and Cleo, telling Alex's story in third person and Cleo's story in first person. It sounds a little weird, until you start reading it. They're both sixteen. They both live in Nanaimo on Vancouver Island, Alex because he's always lived there and Cleo because she was sent to a girl's boarding school centered in equestrian sports. Cleo is filthy rich because her parents are movie producers/directors, and thus leave her alone for vast quantities of time while they're off shooting movies in exotic locales. Alex's mom abandoned his family and his dad is a budding alcoholic living in an RV in front of their house. He's got an aunt and two sisters, twins, making sure things get done rather slowly around the house as Alex's dad spends all his time sleeping with a balding woman who is the island's most prolific realtor because her face is most commonly seen plastered all over areas destined to become strip malls.

Of course, they've got problems. Alex is struggling with his sexuality, which is to say he's a sixteen-year-old gay kid and horrified by the idea of having to tell anyone. Cleo is rich and selfish and lazy, but she's also dealing with the fact that her parents basically dumped her in Vancouver when her actions lead to their massive house in L.A. being stripped of all its expensive televisions, vases, and other possessions. She has no friends, and because she rides dressage and most of the girls at the school don't, that leaves her with one other girl who is a friend by proximity.

They both have horses. Cleo's parents bought her a ridiculously expensive and talented mare called Tandava. Alex has an elderly paint named Turnip that his dad won in a poker game. In a twist of fate, they both start training with Ivan and Fergus, dressage coaches recently retired to the area. Initially Cleo is interested in Alex, but when she tries to kiss him he just winds up screaming "gay!" at her.

And other things happen. I'm actually not inclined to spoil this book, because it's actually good. In the many books I've read for this blog (sure, many of them were Thoroughbred books, but they damn well count) I have learned that stumbling across a good horse-themed book is a miracle, so I'm treasuring this moment. Another Kind of Cowboy is a fun story. It's well-written and the characters are hilarious in a realistic way. It even makes dressage sound interesting. You'll probably like it. So run over to the library or the bookstore and grab a copy. Posthaste. As in now. Go.