I think going into this book, I had a completely incorrect idea of what the story was about. I had a very difficult time following the structure due to the storyline being very fractured. I was expecting something that touched on sexual abuse but was given a lot of plot about horses.. Ultimately this was not for me.

Will appeal to grown up horse girls, but some quality issues means it's not a recommended purchase for most libraries.

I’m sorry to say I didn’t enjoy this book. Stylistically, the book intended to collect a series of disjointed moments across several relationships and decades, including some magical realist elements, and string them together to create something more transformative—but to successfully achieve this, editorial and narrative clarity must be at a really high standard. Unfortunately, this book made several continuity errors. For instance, in the first chapter alone, characters are initially described as being at home and then suddenly it turns out they are in the car driving home; a musuem brochure narrates a description of the character holding it (because of some sloppiness with italics), the dialogue punctuation is inconsistent, and so on. These are distracting and they try the reader’s patience. I think there’s some admirable writing here. Elements of characterization and setting are intriguing, but this book really needed to go through a more rigorous beta reader and editorial process before publication. It feels like a really promising first draft, but unfortunately, it was not ready for publication as is.

I was so excited to read this based on the excerpt but it fell short for me. I felt that everything was disconnected, some chapters were just dropped in to maybe add in word count? It was still a quick read, and interesting plot!

So, I felt the book was very disjointed. At some points it read like classical literature but at other points I felt that it read on a lower scale. The book also didn’t tie to an equilibrium in any way until the very end, so it was a bunch of events happening with no real reasoning. In the end, it wasn’t for me.

Thanks to NetGalley/publishers for the arc!