Miranda Kenneally

Stupid, fuzzy teen love horses. Dangit, Kenneally, you've found my weakness.

Yes, there are problems with this book. Like the insta-love- holy crap, I think this may even put Twilight to shame for "I saw this guy, and now we are SOOOOOOOOULMATESS." In fact, this book's everything seems to move insanely fast. It feels like we're dropped into the story in media res, but we start at the beginning. And the love story is entirely what you expect from a teen novel. We love each other! But we can't! But we can! But we can't! And true love prevails in the end. The pacing in this book is really kind of off. Everything seems to happen so insanely fast, it feels like the entire book happens within the span of a few days, but it doesn't. Savannah becomes a jockey and enters her first race within a very short amount of time. The conflicts in this novel last for a chapter or two, and then they're resolved to move onto something else. Everything goes so fast, it's hard to keep up with this novel at times. I read it in one sitting, and I have a feeling if I read it over time, I might have gotten lost. That summary doesn't sound entirely complimentary, but I did really enjoy this book. It's blog-standard, but still enjoyable.

Now, on to the horses.

I wasn't expecting much from the horse scenes in this book. In my experience, novels that try to include horses without them being the major players, always seems like the horses are just tacked on to set it apart. Which, in all fairness, is probably the case. I read every horse series when I was kid, (and not lying, I still do read them), so it's probably only noticeable to the geeks like me. The racing scenes are actually fairly well executed, and it's clear the author either had some background knowledge of racing, or did some decent research. The horse scenes are fairly brief, but once again, this is from the girl who read the entire Thoroughbred series, where you'd have racing scenes that would last a good twenty pages.

Yeah, this book has some flaws, especially in the pacing, but all in all, I would still recommend Racing Savannah.… (meer)

Library book with a cute cover (not the one in the goodreads photo) that caught my eye and I was intrigued by the idea of a female state champion QB as the heroine of a romance novel.

Plot is a love triangle/QB controversy and a tomboy trying to navigate the romantic AND non romantic relationships in her life with mixed results It had potential but left me feeling flat. I was unimpressed by the writing and also felt like the author must have had a sponsorship deal with Gatorade because I think she mentioned it every few sentences. So good ideas but I had a hard time caring about any of the characters.… (meer)

* I got this book for review from the publisher*

I thought this book was such a fun concept novel. I really loved how this book followed a series of characters over one "experience" every year and also you had flashbacks that focused on the key moments of this year. I also thought this book was very sex postive and found those topics to be super important. I also really liked the side characters and the LGBTQ focused. I though the traveling elements was the highlight and loved the various places they went. I also loved lu path to publishing and really found this book to great fast pace read. So cute!… (meer)