Really enjoyed this book, would highly recommend. I’m going to buy a copy for a friends birthday I think she will love it too

Horse book you say, well say no more. I will be reading other books in this series. I love a good horse story especially one that gets my attention.

Cute story, feel I was missing some background to the world at Oak Lane Stables due to not reading previous books. Read half of the book but felt it was not for me and suited to a younger audience, Love the cover design and idea of the book though.

Description:
Cassie has one horse that’s difficult to ride and healing from an accident, and is competing with another which is easy to ride. Her best friend has fallen out with her, her dad is acting weird, and her attempts at dating are not going well.

Liked:
The set-up above is honestly great, if typical - it's just not paid off well. The tension between English and Western riders feels believable if very melodramatic. I was invested in how Cassie’s dad’s problems were going to play out.

Disliked:
This book has a lot of problems. I’m assuming I’m missing some context from previous books in the series, so that should be taken into account. However, this book is around 180 pages, and could be at least halved if all the extraneous details are removed. We learn things like exactly what food items Cassie’s father has for breakfast (pancakes, sausage, bacon, white toast, scrambled eggs). We learn the colour of every building, carpet, tablecloth. We are treated to an IN DEPTH review of every item of clothing each character wears, and a good few that characters are not wearing. Almost every single character is given a surname. At first it feels like some of these details may be relevant to the plot, but it quickly becomes apparent that none of them are.

It feels like it’s very important to the author that readers understand that this book is set in 1977, and characters say things like “In 1975, which was two years ago…” and “The music at the fair was 70s pop music.” At one point, Cassie’s mom and dad talk for about two pages about a 70s news item with absolutely no relevance to the plot at all.

Cassie is entirely unsympathetic, self-centred, and mean. Her friend Allison unceasingly puts up with her whining, and tries to set her up with a date, for which she gets zero thanks. Cassie finds Allison’s troubles amusing. Both Cassie and Allison are mean about other girls they think are ugly, and Cassie continuously ‘pulls at her blouse so it doesn’t balloon out and make her look fat’, but this isn’t addressed in the story at all, either. Cassie shows no sympathy for the 'grown up' stuff occurring in the book and must be cajoled to treat her parents with any understanding at all.

Whilst a genuine love of horses comes through in this book, and there is some attempt to demonise folks who don’t take proper care of their ponies, there’s an underlying assumption that getting rid of pets who no longer provide value is fine, and the line between 'doesn't care about their animals' and simply 'poor' is not well drawn. Multiple characters talk longingly of trading their horses in, and the protagonist seems to have a very ambivalent relationship with her ‘problem horse’, continuously complaining about having to hand-walk him whilst he recovers from injury. There IS an interesting story here involving a choice between the typical bad-boy ‘wild but I can tame him’ horse of many of these pony stories, and the horse who she’s actually comfortable and happy with, but this isn’t explored.

Ultimately, everything that happens in this story happens TO the protagonist, who has zero agency and doesn’t even try to exercise any. Even her competition wins are due to her superstar horse. I’ve no sympathy or interest for such an unlikeable teen.

Wouldn’t recommend.