Sweet YA of a horse-mad girl - it makes more sense than most of the ilk, since she's been raised on the racecourse. But now she's a recent orphan and lacking contact with horses, until she reaches out to make it happen. Not quite sure what's going on with Cindy - possibly Cindy is not quite sure what's going on with Cindy, either. And a nice picture of a California hunt and the people that make it up; the characterizations are sketchy but nicely varied. A bad stablemaster going worse, and Rosemary caught up in the mess. The horse of the title is also extremely sketchy - very sick throughout the time she knows him, so she never really gets to deal with him as a horse and not a patient. Happy ending, of course, but not the magic everything-comes-right sort of ending either; the problems are solved somewhat out of Rosemary's view, but within the reader's understanding. It's a bit of fluff, but it's a really _good_ bit of fluff - what all those teen-girls-and-horses books aspire to be. It even has good, solid information on riding and care of the horse (including quite a bit of jargon, only some of it explained). I enjoyed it. Unfortunately my copy is truly damaged - the last page was glued to the back cover, and is completely unreadable. So I got rid of it. I'll be keeping an eye out for more by this author, though. ( )