This book is perfect for any young reader who loves horses. It's full of information on how to raise them, talks about showing them, and Candace has a special rapport with them.

BooksGoSocial and Net Galley let me read this book for review (thank you). It has been published, so you can get a copy now.

Candace is very excited her uncle is buying and bringing Champ back home. She offers to be his trainer and they bond on the very first day. She finds she can understand him. He uses ESP to get his messages across. She keeps it a secret. She doesn't want then to think she's nuts!

She teaches him things that are unusual for a stallion to obey. But he does. She notices he's depressed and she suggests to her uncle they get him a mate. She has to research the bloodlines, check out their medical records and see how they look. She gives her info to her uncle and he picks the best. Then they make a big event about the two of them meeting. Soon Champ is going to have a son...

Then her uncle picks up Rosie. Champ's mother. They keep her in another barn until she's passed her health tests. Then they have an even bigger event when they introduce the two of them.

I like horses and I learned a lot reading this book. So will your young reader!

I am sure the author's heart is in the right place, and he may well be describing family members at time. So I don't want to be too harsh; it has to be said though, that this is a strange fantasy version of a stud farm, containing people who are not the brightest and don't know very much about horses, while the English leaves a great deal to be desired. However, it's nice that the characters care about their horses.

The narrative jumps from past to present and back again, and the author is not aware of past perfect. The story could well have been narrated instead of typed and is marred by quite a lot of words in capital letters, which increase as the book progresses.

Some nice photos are included, of horses, dogs; no credits are given in the ARC.

A young lady in Kentucky has spent three years in Equine studies at college and is taking a PhD, and from this she has learnt that horses need to warm up before strenuous exercise and to warm down afterwards. Actually, you're told this during your first riding lesson. And the lady does not know that gripping the reins tightly when you mount is a way to make the horse throw its head in the air (not described) and stand in place (described) rather than move forward when leg aids are applied. You are told that during your first riding lesson. The kind of bit used is not mentioned. Bit pressure on the tongue and jaw means stop or, if in motion, a request to flex. Even with a bitless bridle, the rein tension means stop. And everyone stands looking at this lady wondering what is happening, instead of telling her to slack her reins. Has the author ever ridden?

The stud farm has a horse return from showjumping for a break. He started jumping "at the tender age of seven" when jumpers are backed at three and are jumping loose by three and ridden by four.

The stud farm decides to put a two year old filly in foal. This might be common practice, I don't know, but here we don't breed before three if the filly is well grown, as two is equivalent to a thirteen year old girl. That filly still has a lot of growing to do and the foal will rob her of calcium. Plus, why doesn't she get a chance to have a career of her own and a retired mare get to foal?

The stable hand says the filly appears to be in season and the stud is taking advantage. Next sentence he tells his listener the filly has scanned in foal. When the young lady who supposedly has three or four years of study under her belt, has just had to Google the matter because she didn't know anything about horses, and been told a mare can be scanned at fourteen days.

So a valuable brood mare might have colic because she 'seems to have got into a barrel of green apples' and there were apples lying in her stall. Nobody asks why there are barrels of dangerous green (meaning unripe) apples around a stud farm, or how the mare could have 'got into' one while stabled, or whether some groom fed them to her and why that person has not been found and fired or severely retrained before they feed inedibles to every other horse.

The young lady is asked to examine fillies' pedigrees for crossing with the stallion and actually manages to spend half an hour presenting on each of six fillies - ten minutes on each would seem protracted - and then amazingly her boss picks the filly who just happens to be standing in his own stable, wow, isn't that a surprise? Never occurs to the lady that her boss is not going to buy a filly when he has one. She just thinks it's a total coincidence. I'm sure her boss thought the timewasting exercise (for both) was teaching her, which is fine, but what did she learn?

The elderly vet, Doc, the same who apparently has scanned a mare in foal while she is still in season, actually places a metal ear-ring into the long ear of a mare. And nobody chastises him when they find out what he did. Never put anything into a horse's ear; you can damage it, and the horse may go mad, trying to shake out what it thinks is an insect, and hurt itself. And the stud farm gives Doc a permanent job, even knowing what he did.

More than once we are told that "clapping can startle a horse, so everyone raise their hands high and wave them around instead." Keep your hands low around horses. Raising your arms makes you scary. Waving things around makes you scary. Doing all this makes you a danger to everyone. Nobody in the tale, even though they are horse people, objects to what they are told to do.

Now the fantasy aspect. Our heroine thinks it must be possible that inter-species communication can occur. Well, it occurs all the time. Domestic animals study people, and they do that because they know what we do affects them. Many people do not pay attention to what animals say by body language, sound or actions, but once an animal knows you are observing, picking up and reacting, it will expand its range of communication with you. Any horse owner, dog owner or cat owner can give many examples. No ESP required. A ridden horse will understand its rider's shift of balance. A horse scenting its friend off your coat will know all about its state of health. A horse well trained - like an international showjumper - will happily follow its handler without a lead rope quite often, because this is safe. A horse making distressed movements and whinnying is worrying because it is separated from its friends. No ESP needed.

The lady several times stands in front of the horse so he can see her better. Has it never occurred to her that a horse's eyes are set to the sides of its head? Talk to the horse by all means, it picks up the sound of your voice, calmness, sharpness, tremors or affection. Stand to the side of its head so it can see you and still keep an eye out for danger. This is how horses are used to being handled.

The stud farm puts on two entirely surreal occasions. The meeting of the stallion with his first filly (he's twelve. This is not a jumper's first filly. They are left entire so they can cover during off season, often from the age of three. And owners make use of AI for the jumping season.) is choreographed and televised and the reverend blesses the union and it might as well be a wedding. And the stallion has not once reared up and neighed and struck out when he sees and scents the filly. The book stops short of saying the covering is part of the occasion, but the stallion would be displaying.

The second occasion is when the stallion's dam is being brought to retire in the next field. A stud farm would lead the mare out of the trailer, put her in a quarantine field and slip off her headcollar. Probably wondering if there's a stallion she'd suit on the premises. An even bigger choreographed, national newscast, invited guests occasion is held by these people who clearly have more money and time than they have sense. Most stud farms, the last thing they want is a crowd of strangers on the premises disturbing the horses.

Entirely surreal and I am sure it's all meant well. Don't use this as your horse care manual.
I downloaded an e-ARC from Net Galley. This is an unbiased review, by a longtime horse owner.

This book tells the story of a horse named Champ and his handlers and owners. Champ seems to have a special talent for communicating with people. I was excited to find a book set in Kentucky, with its reputation for horses, training, and horse farms. However, the book fell flat. The wordy descriptions need to be turned into dialogue and heavily edited. Frequent changes of verb tense present a confusing sequence of events for the reader, switching from present to past tense within the same sentence. The cliff hanger ending is obviously intended to lead to the next novel, but it seemed a disappointing ploy and left the reader in limbo.

The book had so much potential, but somehow it got lost. I really wanted to like this book, but it needs a lot more plot and character development. This might be an appropriate book for adolescents who are in love with horses, but the writing needs an upgrade and a lot of editing in order to appeal to older readers.

I received this book from the publisher and from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. The opinions expressed here are entirely my own.

I was not able to finish this book, in fact only got 9%. My first problem was the pictures of descriptions of the horses. One picture was a bay tobiano, and was described as a chestnut and white. Ok I'll give you someone might not know what a tobiano is but the horse was defiantly not chestnut. The other horse was chestnut with a blaze. This was the one called tan and white. Tan is NOT a horse color, and that little of white shouldn't be mentioned with the above horse.

Then the writing style was so juvenile - I actually checked to see if I had requested a children's book - nope adult. Descriptions of the characters just strike me as odd and wordy. Pages to describe their schooling, previous job, how a couple got together and how the division of labor to run the ranch.


Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for my eARC in exchange for an honest review. Unfortunately, I can't give more than 1 star.

Not Ready For Prime Time
This book was offered as adult fiction, however, it seems to be written for 12-year-old girls who are in love with anything 'horsey'. The author narrates the story as if it is a children's program, it gets a bit old. The marriage ceremony for the hoses was just about the end for me. There are huge gaps and omissions that make the story unbelievable. One does not bring home a multi-million dollar stud without plans on when and how to start his breeding life. It is a very unrealistic book before you get to the premise of inter specie communication. While that is the topic of great secrecy in the book, anyone who has owned animals knows exactly how it works and when. This book could have been so much more. As it stands, there are so many plot holes it reads like a never edited Beta manuscript. I stopped reading at 70% and after 18 plot-hole edits. I received this ARC book for free from Net Galley and this is my honest review.

This book (whatever it is) got one star only because of the color photos used as illustrations. And who is the author? M.D. Ballard does not appear to exist on Google. Nor does Goodreads recognize the existence of this title.

It appears to have been written by a lovesick 12 year old with a bent for science fiction and horses. Everyone's eyes are green, except when they're bright blue. The description of each meal use the same adjectives. I could go on, but finally had to stop reading because it was too painful and I did not finish.

Strangely, it wasn't the horse using telepathy and mind control that made me give up. I just read a delightful book about a dachshund with brain cancer called Lily and the Octopus which did the same thing but in an amusing and heart-wrenching way.

Please, please, NetGalley. Give us poor readers/reviewers some warning when you are about to play a joke on us. Perhaps other horse lovers fell into the same trap. MEAN!