Appaloosa Summer by Tudor Robins

A bit of a throwback review — I’ve started rereading these books in preparation for the last book in this trilogy, so thought I’d post my old reviews on the bloggy blog as I finish reading each book!

Synopsis:
Sixteen-year-old Meg Traherne has never known loss. Until the beautiful, talented horse she trained herself, drops dead underneath her in the show ring.

Jared Strickland has been living with loss ever since his father died in a tragic farming accident.

Meg escapes from her grief by changing everything about her life; moving away from home to spend her summer living on an island in the St. Lawrence River, scrubbing toilets and waiting on guests at a B&B.

Once there, she meets Jared; doing his best to keep anything else in his life from changing.

When Jared offers Meg a scruffy appaloosa mare out of a friend’s back field, it’s the beginning of a journey that will change both of them by summer’s end.

Find it on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22674837-appaloosa-summer
Order it on Amazon: http://amzn.to/1QSUf3G

My Review:
4.5 stars — OK, this was just all kinds of YA goodness. Oh crap — I was provided with a copy of this book through netgalley, and here is my honest review!!!

OK, now that that’s out of the way….I will admit, being a Canadian, reading a Canadian author, with a book set in Canada, with a few little Canadian quirks….might have made me a very happy camper. They weren’t overt or all over the place, but it is kind of cool to see colour spelled with a u (it might have been favourite….it was one of those words), Tim Horton’s mentioned, and heck I used to live in Ottawa, so it was like revisiting a magical place! What does this have to do with the book? NOTHING! I just wanted to gush. Now onto relevance….

Coming from the perspective of someone that knows NOTHING about horses and showing and all that stuff, I felt like it was explained really well and didn’t get so technical that I was lost…. Course that also means I can’t vouch for the authenticity, but it worked wonders for me! It had such a heartbreaking start, and I was really wondering how I was going to feel about Meg b/c she seemed so self-contained and a bit separate from her parents. But I really ended up loving Meg…and maybe that’s b/c I got to see her have a summer in her element, embracing who she is and what she loves and learning more about herself.

I LOVED Jared….he was just sweet, and a bit sassy (in a guy way), with his own bit of heartbreak to tell. And the romance in this book was just so sweet and innocent and BEAUTIFUL. LOVED it.

So yeah, it made me feel things, it made me happy, and even though it seems to be a part of a new series, I felt closure at the end of the book. I don’t know if the next book will be about Meg (and Jared), but I would love to see more of their story if it’s told!! Will definitely be watching out for this author in the future.