Annual Holiday Gift Guide!

Elizabeth, blog correspondent and all around awesome person, apparently always gets her holiday shopping done early. Thus I got an e-mail about all the fantastic horse-themed gifts you can give your loved ones this holiday season. I am here to show you her greatest finds, and add in a few of my own.

Do you have a Saddle Club fan on your hands? I am told this is the exact sweatshirt that Carole gives Stevie in Starlight Christmas, and while I don't know what the significance of that is, if any, you can buy them in a mother-daughter pair. How adorable, I think. Get them here.

Do you have the unyielding desire to decorate your home with the same pattern over and over in the same design probably found at Lyssa's home at Thunder Ranch in Star's Chance? Back In The Saddle has anticipated your needs, and brings you this pattern in the form of coverlets, window valances, place mats, pillow shams, chair cushions, table runners, and sofa covers. Two sizes of sofa covers, just in case you also have a love seat. I officially request that someone buy all of these things, so I can see them in use all at the same time. Please go here to purchase all of them.

Have you ever found yourself immensely critical of the holiday decoration choices of others? Of neighbors and loved ones? Of fellow family members, perhaps? Of course you have! So we bring you ornaments in "palomino, bay and crystal." I'll give you one guess on who the odd man out is in this group. That said, I actually sort of like these, and I have seen a lot of awful horse ornaments on display at Hallmark and on Christmas trees that I have tried not to find fault with because they were the Christmas trees of friends. That's right, I will only silently judge you. No worries. Get the glass ornament ponies here.

There is nothing better than cubic zirconia. Not only can you trick others into thinking they're worthy of precious jewels, but you get to only spend $40 when you should realistically be spending much, much more. It's sort of a win-win! This is another one of those situations where I would like someone to buy the pendant, ring and earrings so I can see them in use all at the same time. I know someone out there is willing to do this. I mean, I once saw a person go to great lengths to buy an entire outfit of solid Pepto-Bismol pink topped off with gold sandals. I know you're out there somewhere, person. Go buy them.

In terms of children's toys, I am sad to say there isn't much out there that really caught my attention. At least not in a way that resulted in an oh-my-god-what-is-that-and-why-is-it-awesome (question mark, exclamation point!) reaction.

There is the Breyer horse with giant fairy wings, Disney princesses come with their own horses now, and Shrinky Dinks. (I love saying Shrinky Dink! It makes me giggle.) But I think the winner goes to Barbie this year:

Yes, that's a horse with a shower. Also, there is a Barbie groom that is sold separately. The shower head actually works, and when wet, the horse's mane will turn pink. Sounds like a beautiful time to learn about mildew, and yet it is pretty awesome. It also comes with ton of accessories, as well as a bucket and shovel, which for some reason really amuses me. $29.98! Thank you, Barbie.

That's your annual toy and gift guide, you guys. Happy Holidays!

Star's Chance: And then they got lost in Montana.

Star's Chance

Thoroughbred #45

by Karle Dickerson

2001

Will Star ever regain his spirit?

At last, Wonder's Star has recovered from the illness that halted his promising racing career so suddenly. The vet says he'll be back on the track in no time. But Christina Reese is convinced the colt has lost his spirit. She can't seem to communicate with him like she used to. Christina needs help.

When Lyssa Hynde offers to work her magic with Star, Christina takes the colt to Lyssa's ranch in Montana to rehabilitate. But Montana is worlds away from the track, and Christina and Star are lost there. Will Christina and Star learn to take risks and trust each other again?

The last time I read about Lyssa, I remember wishing she would drown in a shallow puddle of water. That desire really hasn't gone away, so I was curious to see how I'd react to Star's Chance, which initially seems like a flagrant device to get Lyssa back into the storyline.

Because we all love Lyssa.

Star's Chance begins with Star having rebounded from death, which seems like a pretty nifty trick because the last we saw him he was practically cast in his stall and only Christina's magical girl tears saved him from certain doom. The vet proclaims him fine, but cautions Chris about taking it easy with Star until he regains his strength. There's no telling if he'll ever bounce back to racing form, and the vet takes it even further by saying there's no telling he'll ever be strong enough to even breed. But what does he know? He is merely a vet! Christina knows what is best for her wonder pony, okay? And he's going to run in the Kentucky Derby next year, because that's what's best for the horse.

About two and a half days go by, with Christina getting ever more frustrated with Star's "lack of spirit" when she rides him. Parker mentions that if Lyssa were here, she would have Star back to his old self in a couple of hours, max. Then he has a most fantastic idea! Perhaps Christina should take Star to Lyssa, who lives on a dude ranch in Montana. Christina is certainly unenthused about this idea, telling him he is "absolutely nuts" and in no way is she taking her wonder pony to Montana to re-enact The Horse Whisperer, just without the death and the sex.

Enter Brad Townsend, because where plot goes stagnant, Brad Townsend has to be called in to stir up the pot. Asked to accompany Parker to a Townsend party, Christina is forced to stand around with people who are just as well off as she is, but have the gall to actually act rich and wear sparkly things. The nerve.

Instantly, Brad appears by Christina to tell her that he's heard about her troubles with Star, this being the third day after Star's been cleared for some light activity. Christina begins to ask how he heard, but he says, "No, it wasn't Parker. But I have my ways." Yes, he reads minds. Stunned, Christina instantly goes on alert, falling back to her default stance as indignant horse loving teen, asking him why he even cares, apparently having forgotten that Brad only antagonizes her because it is basically good sport. Brad insists that selling Star was the best business decision he ever made, taking the time to lift up her hand and point out her blisters and broken nails, because he is a master at deduction.

Christina promises that he'll regret selling Star, and he pretty much tells her that no, he will not. Then he saunters off, his work here done. Game, set, match. Brad Townsend wins at life. Immediately Christina rushes back to Parker, insisting that they have to go now so she can call Lyssa and go to Montana to help Star. Despite having only worked with Star for three days. I think someone has some instant gratification issues.

Because no one in Thoroughbred goes to school, and Ashleigh is a horrible parent, Christina goes to Montana with Lyssa's uncle, subjecting herself and me to every Western stereotype you can think of for the next hundred pages. Star is loaded onto a trailer with cattle, hauled by a truck that could very well fall apart at any second, with the radio station permanently tuned to Western music. Once they arrive in Montana, Christina is ushered into the house, where everything is beige and tastefully decorated in horse themed or Navajo prints. Instantly, some guy named Ray asks Christina if her horse's spirit is broken, and what the hell it totally is not! How dare he kind of be ignorantly astute like that! Only Christina can use similar verbiage to basically say the same thing.

Lyssa tries to placate Christina by saying that Ray doesn't know any better. He is, after all, from Arizona, where jerks come from. Ray continues to try to win Christina over, using common forms of conversation starters that Christina construes as "creepy" behavior. When she's not avoiding Ray, she's on super defensive mode with Lyssa, because despite the fact that she trailered Star all the way to Montana with heifers she ultimately wants nothing to do with Lyssa's supposed advice. Also despite being totally about Lyssa's training techniques back in Close Call.

Eventually, Lyssa demands that Christina take Star out into a reservoir in order for him to fight out his problems with her, because that's what the American Indians do, I guess. Christina isn't having any of that, no matter how many American Indians gentled horses this way. Star is a racehorse, damn it. She cannot hurt him, despite the fact that she's trailered him all the way to Montana for seemingly no reason and is about to take him on a round up type thing in the wilderness, where he will inevitably get lost and wind up roaming the countryside in search of his previously completely insane personality.

So this is what they do. Star gets loose up in the mountains, and Christina speeds off after him. Eventually they all get lost, Christina finds Star predictably injured, and winds up spending the night with him out in the wood somewhere. The next morning, Christina rides Star (sans tack, of course) into a river, where Star completely flips out and does his fight the water deal that brings his old personality back. And then they both climb out of the river and die of hypothermia.

Or not. Lyssa finds them, and all is well. Christina gets to put a checkmark next to Montana on her list of states that she has visited, and Star is set to win the Kentucky Derby. Surely he will not finish, you know, last. Or anything. That would be entirely too unjust.

• There is one thing I liked about this book: Christina never really admits that Lyssa's advice helped or did anything positive at all. By the end, she's really had it and starts to freak out at Lyssa about how it is entirely useless to train horses to open gates. And Lyssa actually does manage to look a little sheepish about it, because her horse was the one that let Star out to begin with.
• I really don't buy Parker telling Christina to take Star to Lyssa. I would accept this plot if Christina had dreamed up this idea, and then gotten totally overwhelmed when she finally gets there because she is a mother hen when it comes to her horse.
• Ashleigh, you suck so much. When Christina calls her mother up to tell her about this round up she's taking Star on, the very round up in which she loses Star, the only thing Ashleigh says is, "Sounds like it will be an adventure." Right about here is when you put your foot down and demand that your daughter bring her damn wonder pony back to Kentucky, because if the magical trick is thrashing around in water, I'm pretty sure you could have done that at home.
• Three days! She only waits three days before taking Star to Montana. Seriously.

And that was a Thoroughbred book.

The First Saturday in May

The First Saturday in May
2007
Tagline: Two minutes can last a lifetime.

Documentary time! Again!

So here's the deal: two brothers drop everything for over a year to follow these guys (and these horses): Michael Matz (Barbaro), Dan Hendricks (Brother Derek), Bob Holthus (Lawyer Ron), Dale Romans (Sharp Humor), Kiaran McLaughlin (Jazil), and Frank Amonte Jr. (Achilles of Troy) on the trail to the Kentucky Derby.

It's interesting to watch this a few years removed from the 2006 Kentucky Derby, knowing the stories of what happened to these horses after the Triple Crown trail. For instance, Barbaro and Lawyer Ron are both deceased, Jazil won the Belmont Stakes and that was pretty much all, Brother Derek and Sharp Humor suffered injuries and faded into stud duty, and Achilles of Troy probably has the saddest story of them all. Poor Achilles completely disappeared, and only rumor puts him in poor condition at Aqueduct days after the 22 counts of abuse were filed against his owner in April of this year.

But those stories could not be part of The First Saturday in May, although I think it would have been fascinating had they touched more on why Frank Amonte Jr. got the head trainer job with Achilles of Troy just before the Gotham, considering it was the last race Achilles of Troy was ever in. The only story they follow up on is Barbaro, for obvious reasons.

The documentary itself is much better than I thought it would be. In short, it isn't an overlong, overproduced montage in the same vein of the kinds you see during the Triple Crown broadcasts. It's realistic. Some of these guys are the type to drink whiskey straight from the bottle while playing golf, some of them curse up a storm, and some of them really are just straight-laced family guys. It was sweet to watch Michael Matz teach his son about approaching a horse with confidence (plus, I am sort of in love with Michael Matz), and I did enjoy watching Frank Amonte accost his son for complaining that the dirt they're standing in might ruin his new shoes.

What with the 2006 Triple Crown being so tragic in the case of Barbaro, I was curious to see how they handled the aftermath of the Derby. I am a person who went on Barbaro overload about two and a half years ago. Granted, I always kept up with what was going on with him, but now I just want to move on with my life. If this documentary had been made any other year, it would have skipped straight to the "here's where they are now" section and called it a day. Because it happened in 2006, they give us a two minute Barbaro clipshow that I am almost certain could have felt less pieced together. However, for the purposes of showing how important the Kentucky Derby winner is to American sport, I suppose it works.

In all, I thought it was well done. I sort of want to buy it, but I'm restraining that impulse.

(Next: books! I promise.)

Shergar is probably haunting some remote part of Ireland.

Shergar

1999

I enjoy movies that romanticize real life events that were in reality needlessly bloody. The true story of Shergar will undoubtedly never be fully known, although it does look like some fairly recent digging into the matter resulted in some gruesome claims.

Basically, in 1981 Shergar became the European Horse of the Year. He won the Epsom Derby, the Irish Derby, and several other important races before being retired that year. In 1983, he was kidnapped and never seen again. That is pretty much all you can say with 100% certainty about his disappearance, but it is greatly assumed that he was taken and held for ransom by the Provisional Irish Republican Army, or IRA. Apparently they took the horse on the misapprehension that kidnapping a national (Irish) icon would enrage people less than kidnapping your run-of-the-mill wealthy person. Needless to say, after the complete failure that was this ransom attempt, they stuck with snatching people.

There are two running theories on how Shergar was killed: 1) the IRA didn't know what they were doing with a stallion, who possibly went crazy and was subsequently shot hours after being stolen or 2) Shergar was held until it became clear the horse's syndicate had no intention of paying, the IRA had no idea what to do with the stallion, and felt they should kill him as they perceived him to be injured. With machine guns. Yes, with machine guns. The horse's remains have never been found.

Either way you look at it, Shergar died a violent and upsetting death. So, after this enlightening little history lesson, let's look at the movie version.

About a year ago, I decided I had to take a break from books or media that involved the Irish. For those who have followed this blog for some length of time, you know why. For those who haven't, I can't explain myself briefly, so I won't try. Needless to say, there are Irish people in this movie, and I put up with it because this movie was requested and I am happy to put my problems with the Irish aside for a request.

Anyway, the movie is pretty cut and dry up to a point. Shergar is stolen and hidden away in some guy's barn, where he is to stay until the IRA gets their money. (As an aside: apparently the IRA didn't know that Shergar was owned by a syndicate, which amuses me for lots of reasons.) Unknown to the IRA, this guy has a stable worker. I never caught his name, so I will call him Boy. Boy is freakishly obsessed with Shergar. He has yellowed newspaper clippings about the horse on his bedroom wall, which should have been a clue for the guy (I didn't catch his name either, so I will call him The Guy) that keeping a wayward teen in your barn with a stolen racehorse isn't the best of ideas, especially when there are men with guns out there that are willing to kill you for withholding this information.

They proceed to act very, very suspicious. At one point, a police helicopter approaches the farm and everyone runs. Boy freaks and Guy runs into the stable, because this is totally normal, rational behavior! The only one acting normally is the wife (I actually only caught two names in this movie, and neither were hers, so she is the Wife), who curses at the helicopter for scattering her laundry. Damn it all! And then, like complete idiots, the police helicopter away like what they just saw was not at all obviously telling.

Eventually we have another brush with the police, who are out combing Ireland for the horse. This resulted in a British officer having a cow spray manure all over him, which immediately made me annoyed. Poop jokes are never appreciated, especially in dramas. I firmly believe that, as a society, we need to get over feces being funny. Because it is not.

Anyway, the IRA decides that the syndicate is just jerking their chain, so they decide to kill the horse. Except Boy, who dreams of being a jockey and has been having Cindyesque interaction with Shergar for a good forty minutes, decides he's not going to let that happen and runs away with with horse.

Insert dramatic hour long cross country chase! After dyeing Shergar a dark bay color, Boy runs into a tinker (read: Irish Gypsy) and his granddaughter. Joe and Kate. (See, I was paying attention!) We get a moment to kick back and relax, ride horses over the hills, have family moments, and bond. Then Boy rides Joe's mare in a steeplechase, which he wins. Unfortunately for him, the IRA love Irish festivals, and show up with the Guy in tow. Guy tries to warn Boy, but it is too late because the IRA get all besides themselves and tear off after Boy, who rides into the countryside on Shergar.

It rains. Shergar's dye job goes to hell, just in time for the dramatic confrontation between Boy and the IRA. When it comes right down to it, the gunmen fail to shoot the horse. Instead, they hesitate about five times, and Boy jumps Shergar off a cliff. The IRA members decide to be sad about this and walk back to wherever they came from, despite the fact they were all in cars previously.

Ultimately, I was not horribly disappointed in this movie. It had silly moments, it had sentimental crazy moments, it involved the Irish all the time, the Boy rode the horse off a freaking cliff, but mainly I'd say it just failed to entertain me. I mean, I only caught two names. I'd say that's relevant.

In your head, in your head, Zombie...

The Young Black Stallion
2003

Tagline: The greatest story of friendship ever told.

My reaction: lies!

Weirdly, this movie managed to get Zombie by The Cranberries stuck in my head. The only reason this happened is because the old man character tells the annoying young girl character something about someone bringing "their tanks and their bombs" somewhere to maybe blow something up. And I narrowed my eyes at the television and cried bitter, awful tears. It is stuck in my head now. It is truly horrible.

Anyway, I don't know why this movie was made. Quite frankly, it is bad. It was like a mash up of The Black Stallion and The Black Stallion Returns done in forty-five minutes, and let me tell you, the length of this movie is the only thing good about this. That, and maybe it's pretty occasionally. The rest of it is awful. Awful! Yes, with an exclamation point!

First things first: the main character is a girl. And wow, is she irritating. Plus, she couldn't act her way out of a paper bag, even if she was given a map and a flashlight and verbal cues. She wouldn't be able to find the light of day. I don't care if she is a child, damn it, she was wasting mine and everyone else's precious time. Actually, no one in this movie could act their way out of a moderately large trash bag. I am pretty sure they would all get lost somewhere and die in a desert of dehydration after having convinced themselves they've escaped and are actually successful. The only good actor in this bunch is the horse(s). And even then I feel that someone overdid it with the rearing.

Moving on, the voice dubbing that was mainly used to insert lines of dialogue such as "go, Shetan, go" and "you're such a good boy" and "wait!" I...sort of wanted to smack someone after a while. My favorite: "No, it's really me in person, see?" Shut up, really? You're here in person? Like, right in front of me? People, she was only gone for maybe a day or two. A month, tops. Or however long it takes to tame a wild yearling, which in this movie looks like it took a handful of water and two seconds.

And now, the plot, which is The Black Stallion meets The Black Stallion Returns meets the most annoying girl on the planet. This girl almost immediately gets lost in the desert, and is saved by the Black, who is a yearling and is off roaming the Arabian countryside because some mean man caught his mom. As we know from this movie's bonus features, the Black is really the son of some celestial Friesian (I have heard this is actually supported by the book, much to my horror), and this little girl's grandfather's mare named Gina. Or something. Whatever. The important thing is that the Black led the girl to water, and then she gives him water, which means that they are now super fabulous lifetime friends!

Only she randomly stumbles across her house (goody!) and the Black books it out of there, abandoning her to her grandfather and this small boy who was maybe her brother. Or cousin. Or someone. The Black is gone for a year, only to magically come back because I suppose it took him a year to get over this spooking episode. No matter! Little girl rides out to the Black, hops on his back because he is now tame for some reason, and decides that she's going to ride him in the upcoming festival race a la The Black Stallion Returns and win all the best mares and restart their family breeding stable, which I guess went to shit.

But Grandfather forbids it! This horse is like the devil! The little girl does the most shockingly predictable thing and decides to disguise herself and enter the race anyway, putting Shetan on the line. Her grandfather is too busy cuddling with Gina to really notice what's going on. I have a feeling he was drunk, because he sort of got weird halfway through the festival and abandoned the kids to find a hookah tent somewhere. Ah, parenting.

They race, the girl wins, they bring all the mares and Shetan back to the old homestead, and Shetan kisses his mom because of course he remembers her!

Of course this is not what the book is actually about, because I remember paging through it one day out of boredom and I remember it being much darker, but almost as ridiculous, and it actually was a prequel to The Black Stallion. I am not quite sure what this movie even is.

It's Virginia and the Spoiled Brat!

Virginia's Run
2002

Tagline: Two sisters. One remarkable adventure that will bring them together.

This is another one of those movies that I like despite its sentimental, unrealistic core. If you're in this for faithfully depicted equestrian scenes, you need to put the DVD down and back away slowly, because you're too serious for this movie. If you're here to grin evilly and compare this to the Thoroughbred series for no reason other than you get a strange kick out of it, well you're in for an hour and forty-five minutes of joy!

It starts out normal enough: a girl with super hearing jerks awake because a mare in a pasture somewhere is having a foal during a thunderstorm. This mare needs her assistance! Virginia speeds out into the storm to save the mare and foal, because this mare used to be her dead mother's and naturally she would be attached to any progeny it might have. The mare dies, leaving behind the foal.

So, the story goes that Virginia used to dash around on horseback all the time before her mother fell off of the mare and met her end, which means that Gabriel Byrne has forbidden Virginia from riding or in any way associating with horses. He doesn't want Virginia to get attached to the new foal, despite the foal's owner coming by to give her milk because the foal has attached itself to her. The foal's owner is Blake Raines (think New Generation Brad Townsend, complete with cravat), father of Darrow Raines (think Brad Townsend, Joanna Campbell era), the resident jerk who is dating Caroline, Virginia's older sister, and has a weird antagonistic relationship with Virginia for seemingly no reason. It's like everything I could possibly want in a movie!

Virginia ignores her father and bonds with the foal anyway, naming it Stormy and spending probably every waking second with it as her father goes on his oblivious way. Two years pass, and Virginia has taken up speeding around on Stormy during the night, nearly getting hit by cars during her adventures in teenage juvenile delinquency. Darrow is still dating Caroline, inexplicably enough, but turns his sights on Stormy as his new endurance horse.

(Yes, the horse is two. I know, I know.)

Stormy and Darrow don't get along, giving Virginia a way to weasel in and accuse Darrow of being, well, Darrow. Darrow threatens to have the horse shot, but instead settles on selling him, which he tells Virginia all about later at school, giving her his winning smile as she reacts in typical horse story main character fashion, which would be to get on her bike and ride as fast as she can to the ranch, only to get there too late and burst into impotent sobs.

The Caroline/Darrow relationship keeps going, and is remarkably everything I wanted it to be. Darrow gets pissed off that she won't put out in the backseat of his car, so he takes out his sexual frustration in road raging, which sends the car into a telephone pole. Caroline breaks her nose, and Darrow proceeds to never call her, only showing up later at a town dance with another girl. Caroline takes a moment to man up and punch him in the face. This is the Caroline who embraces violence as a means to solve problems, and who is therefore awesome.

Meanwhile, Virginia has started to work at the Raines ranch because her dad believes this will shake her out of her funk over losing Stormy. Instead he just catches her riding, and breakthroughs occur that send him off in search of the horse, which he finds and gives to her for her birthday. Life is super fantastic. Stormy is living in the garage, Caroline punched Darrow in the face, their dad is sort of dating the ranch manager but not...and then comes along the endurance race.

While training for the race, Virginia has a run in with Darrow and his posse, because Darrow has a posse that follows him everywhere, be he on horseback or not. Because they have a weird antagonistic relationship, they immediately decide to have a match race right there. Somehow a train gets involved, and Virginia decides that she just has to beat Darrow and spurs her horse across the tracks and in front of the train, nearly getting them both killed.

Darrow and Virginia stare at each other across the tracks as the train goes by, Virginia looking like she just swallowed something very bitter, and Darrow giving her this look that I immediately associate with disbelief that the main character nearly splattered herself all over the train tracks, but the movie associates with rampant rage that she beat him. In my head, they are so having angry sex when they get out of high school.

Anyway, the movie starts making some dumb moves after this. Darrow steals Stormy on the morning of the race, Virginia finds Stormy just in time to enter the race based on the town mob insisting that she ride, Darrow is a little too obviously attempting to win the race at all costs because his father is being sort of super insane about winning, then Virginia wins after a prolonged Virginia/Darrow hate fueled match race in which they glare at each other a lot.

And it just occurred to me that I have no idea what that tagline is talking about. This movie is so not about sisters.

Points:

- Typically, Darrow gets all the awesome lines in this movie. And then the movie kicks him in the balls. Poor guy.

- Crimped hair! When was this allowed to claw its way out of the 80s?

- "Who would steal a horse in the middle of a thunderstorm?" Yeah, who? I mean, rain and thunder should be all it takes to dissuade anyone from doing anything.

- "Stormy was my horse even though he didn't belong to me." I am so tired of this line. Why can't we tweak it into something like, "I loved him and now he's gone and now I'm really freaking depressed about it." Granted, that may need some tweaking of its own, but at least it's sort of got some truth to it.

- "If Darrow is such a jerk, why hasn't he told Dad about you visiting the foal?" Good point, Caroline! The movie was trying at something interesting initially.

- I think Gabriel Byrne slept through most of this movie. He looks like he was just gently roused from a coma during all of his scenes.

- I don't know what's up with this endurance race, but everyone in this town takes it very, very seriously.

So, I guess you could say that I've got my own reasons for liking it. And mainly they all hinge on the antagonistic relationship that made me smile.

At least none of the characters were Irish.

Ride a Dark Horse
by Laura Moore
2001

Cassie Miller was on track to be one of the best equestrian riders of the sport when a terrible accident left her as the guardian of an orphaned niece and nephew. Seeking means to support the twins--now five years old--Cassie takes a job as a horse trainer at the prestigious Five Oaks farm where she finds not one, but two worthy adversaries--Orion, a bold, dark horse that has yet to find a rider it deems its equal, and local veterinarian Caleb Wells, a man whose startling good looks and quick wit leave Cassie unnerved.

As Cassie trains Orion for competition, Caleb, a partner in the farm, watches over their progress. A womanizer since his recent divorce, he soon finds his heart softening for this strong and gifted woman--and for her unconventional family. But as Orion's Hampton Classic competition looms, Caleb's vengeful ex-wife threatens to ruin everything Cassie and Caleb have worked for....

I continue to totally fail at reading romance novels. They just make me want to bang my head against the nearest hard object until I fall into a blissful state of unconsciousness. This urge takes over about a quarter of the way through the book, and to save my poor brain I make a courageous effort to understand the plot as I read one sentence every five to ten pages until I finish the book in five minutes and call it a day.

That's what happened here. Nothing against Laura Moore. I'm sure she's a nice lady. It's just that I've (sort of) read Chance Meeting, and I know what she's up to.

Let's all meet Cassie. Everything about her is sublime on every level you can imagine. Basically, Cassie is better than you. At the tender age of nineteen, she adopts her dead brother's infant twins, drops off the face of the earth in order to raise them, and for reasons that don't make a whole lot of sense, goes to Virginia to interview for their trainer position because everyone before her has predictably sucked. And where they have so routinely failed, Cassie will be vaguely awesome.

Her interview is essentially the sob story that is Cassie's life. Because backstory can't be subtly woven into a story, it must be smashed in your face and ground into your pores until you curl up into submission and wait for it to stop. Everyone is appropriately stunned by the news that life is hard, and Cassie gets the job, becoming the rider of the fabulously difficult Orion.

Now let's meet Caleb. Caleb is an oversexed asshole, and Laura is doing him absolutely no favors by having him be an oversexed asshole for about the first hundred pages. First impressions are everything, Laura! Your character? He's kind of a jackass. I wanted Orion to kick him in the face. I do not care that halfway through the book you made him a loveable, kindly veterinarian who sits by the bedside of a comatose dog all night. By that point I was skimming and I still wanted Orion to kick him in the face.

Anyway. Caleb learns that Cassie has been hired, and since she is only twenty-four to his thirty-two, he immediately has a fit about her being a baby, a girl, and a child. Yes. All of those things! After proceeding to meet her, however, this opinion changes rather swiftly. Why do you do this, romance genre? I will never stop being disturbed by your father figure issues.

Because Caleb is a jackass, he lays it on pretty thick with Cassie, who is instantly repulsed by his ridiculous behavior. This does not cause Caleb to pause and think to himself, "Hey, maybe I'm being a douche. If I want her to sleep with me, perhaps I should turn it down about a billion notches until I seem like a presentable man again." He just continues being a jackass until Cassie presents her mare, who may or may not have a strained tendon. And it is so super oh my god nail biting that Caleb, being a vet, finally latches on to his professional persona and finally levers Cassie's personality back into doe-eyed female who watches in awe of the strong, manly man who fixes everything by stating the fucking obvious.

And then three hours later he's trying to cover her face with his saliva in a bathroom, and because she's seen his professional side for all of two pages, this is a good idea...until it isn't! Just what the hell is going on here? Cassie is a lady!

Faced with reason, Caleb finally calls it a day after threatening her that they will indeed make love. Maybe not now, but he's (kind of) patient and you just wait. Oh, you just wait.

The next day Cassie goes running in the quaint Virginia countryside and somehow manages to bump into Caleb, who is all pissed off because she is alone and there could be rapists and molesters just waiting to pounce on Cassie at five thirty in the morning. This is totally likely! He tries to devour her face with his mouth again (I guess failing to see his own point), but a truck rumbles by and Cassie doesn't want the whole town of rapists and molesters finding out that she's easy, so she pulls away. And thus starts the three hundred pages of Caleb trying not to be an asshole, Cassie being vaguely good at riding, and everyone being rather boring as they try to establish an actual relationship built on friendship and trust before they have the aforementioned sex.

I kind of skipped most of those pages. But I did pick up on the following:

- Cassie has a brother, Alex, and Alex is the "if you hurt my sister, I will end you" type. Caleb picks up on this and instantly loathes him with a burning passion that left me cold. He's her brother, you asshole. So I kept up with the book mainly to see if Alex would punch Caleb in the nose.

- Somehow, the turning point in this story becomes Caleb's ex-wife attempting to give him a fake blow job in the middle of a stable. It's not shocking that this happened. What is shocking is how hurt Caleb is after everyone really believes that he's the kind of guy who would get a blow job in public. Caleb, may I refer you to the first hundred pages of this novel?

- I cannot believe how long this book is. Oh my god.

- Cassie talks like she's an elderly woman living in the 1950s. Based on every romance novel I've ever read, it is clear to me that none of these writers remember what being twenty-four is like.

- At random, Cassie's ex-fiancé shows up specifically so Caleb can beat him to a pulp. You have to love forced plot and one-dimensional characters! I know I do.

- Orion is awesome! And they win everything!

It's been a while since I've read a romance novel. I guess we were due.