Rein It in

I’ve been reading all the teen/adult) fiction I can find about the hunter/jumper world, & first of all, I have to say I enjoyed Bloomberg's series as a whole. She clearly knows and loves horses, and captures the horse care inside of a show barn with great detail--from basic care to the complexities of top-level riding (those are explained really well). It was nostalgic for me, as I used to live in that world myself, though not at this elite level. But all hunter/jumper show barn are similar in many ways, and this book is richly detailed & accurate about the world of a show barn -- of many other types of barns as well, including grooming and cleaning tack to riding in a show ring on a six figure horse; most of all, its about three characters growing up in this world because they love horses first, and competing second. Only the wealthiest do nothing but get on & off a horse at the in-gate at a show; these kids would be helpless as to how to put a saddle on their horse, but the three main characters do some of their own horse care and really love their horses. Having a close relationship with your horse is both personally enriching and helpful in competition -- the more you & your horse understand eachother, the better you ride. It’s refreshing to see Tommi, one of the three main characters & one of the absolute wealthiest kids in a sea of money, doing her own horse care alongside her friend, Kate, a working student from a blue collar family who rides whichever horse the stable needs her to ride, and doesn't have her own. Some of the characters look down on Kate to a degree, despite the fact that she's the best rider in the barn. I can personally attest that, even with a horse that's competitive at an A show, you'll get smirks from some kids if you’re doing your own grooming. Sticking with grooming as a start, Kate is a very likable character & you’re rooting for her in this book, but she starts every sentence with “um,” which drove me up the wall. She doesn’t have an ounce of self-confidence & it’s pretty obvious from early on, so the "um"s are overkill; she begins to look pathetic. Tommi is likable & probably the most well developed character in the book and in the series, which doesn’t surprise me because it is pretty openly based on the author’s own life. The third main character, Zara, changes the most through the course of the series, and she's a lot of fun in the this book. She was unbearable in the first book of this series, seemingly doing little but rolling her eyes & saying “whatever,” and she’s much more interesting now, finally meshing with the other two. Speaking of which, there’s far too much eye rolling in general in this book. But there are some great scenes—probably all the best ones — in the barn or at shows, which the author knows really well. They take up the majority of the book, happily for the reader. Altogether it's a book worth reading, though more of a "beach read" type with a simple structure and a few other kids behave in an overkill way, as Kate is. You want to say, Okay, Georgina, we get it! I recommend reading the series as a whole, though this particular book would probably stand on its own. Nostalgia is not required--if you're at all interested in how horses are cared for and what it's like to be around them, you'll almost certainly like this book. Despite the mostly two-dimensional characters, there's much to enjoy.