Bonnie Bryant

I was so pumped that I found an early Saddle Club book that I never read. This was a bonus story that came exclusively with a body care/shampoo gift set in the early 1990s. The story takes place at the same time as books 13/14, but makes no mention of those events. It also ignores Lisa being in a different country on vacation, yet inexplicably she is in Virginia to help set up for New Years. Alright, time is rather nebulous in the series, I'll give it a break. I'll even excuse the excessive show more descriptions of bath products and the amount of baths/showers the girls feel the need to take during this story; it IS sold with a bubble bath set. I WON'T forgive the character breaks though - horse-crazy 12-year-old girls complaining about the smell of horses?!? What world is this?! Carole especially saying smelling like a barn is gross is a bit too far-fetched for me. I'm disappointed if Bryant wrote this, but I hope she didn't. There is no winner though, because the ladies who ghost wrote a lot of the series were actual horse people and wouldn't say those things either. I understand that the writers need to get paid, but selling their souls (and beloved characters) like this was a shame. There were so many times the girls mentioned how they had to get clean after riding I lost count, and the book is only like 60 pages long.

Don't bother tracking this book down if you want to complete your Saddle Club series. Just pretend this abomination doesn't exist. show less

Trigger warning for animal death. I wasn't the intended audience for this. I read this after reading part of a surprisingly stupid book about another animal death. This was more realistic, engaging and enjoyable than the other. It's a great book for horse people and probably people learning to ride. The audience is likely young children but it's educational to anyone. The conflicts and rivalries are believable. There's tons of exposition, weird jokes, stupid jokes, and plot contrivance. But show more this is one of the times I understood why it was all being done and approved. I'm glad I got ahold of this. show less

The girls take a trip to their friend's ranch out west in time for a local rodeo. They also need to figure out why a competing ranch is taking so much of their business - which, now that I think about it, they never solved. They did stop a competing wrangler from making a fool of their own, but that was the extent of it. Hmm.

This book, along with the rest of the Bar None Ranch visits the girls take, made me very disdainful towards English riding when I was little - as opposed to the 'real' show more riding that was 'useful'. Heh. I was a even a little disappointed when my mother allowed me to take riding lessons because they were at a hunter/jumper barn and not stock seat. show less

Review pending/Reread pending...

This is the book that started it all... An obsession that lasted YEARS. Even now... I still have these books boxed and tucked away in storage. (One of these days I'm going to have to go pull everything out and go through it all - even I don't know what all I got in there anymore. Just the main stuff really...)

Anyways, I think I know what next year will bring, but that'll be for another post, not this here.

This is the first in a long running series. Probably show more one of the best running series for horse crazy girls out there (behind Farley's Black Stallion and Island Stallion books). I tried several over the years, and this was easily my favorite series.

As the first book, it was a bit weak as a stand-alone, but it's also got the weight of the entire series behind it (as well as a spin-off series for older readers).

As an unofficial member of the Saddle Club, I give this a resounding Yee-haw! lol show less