Jenny Oldfield

Reviewed by Jennifer Rummel for TeensReadToo.com

DOUBLE TWIST finds Laura and Patrick gearing up to compete in an ice-dancing championship in Montreal. This time, they expect a medal. Their excitement overpowers the strenuous workouts, until an accident ruins their plans. When Patrick goes down, his knee prevents him from dancing again, until after the competition. Laura sinks into depression, until she thinks of a brilliant plan to stay in the competition.

During normal skating hours at the show more rink, Laura spies one boy showing off his footwork. He looks like he has all the right moves, and with a little work, she has a new skating partner. Keeping him as a partner is an entirely different matter. Boys tease him about ice-dancing, but Laura finds a way to make it more appealing. Together Laura and Scott work on a hip-hop ice-dancing routine. The uniqueness of their dancing could ultimately blow up in their faces, but they're willing to work like crazy and have a little fun to try something completely new.

This novel is great fun and will be popular with girls looking for more sport books. The book, set in the U.K., is half-Americanized, making the reader wonder exactly where it is located. At the championship, Scott and Laura are announced as the team from the U.K., but it's never revealed beforehand. Words like Mum and soccer make it a little bit hard for the reader to figure out the setting. However, this slight issue did not take away from the enjoyment of the book. show less

A Winter in Ravensdale by Kate Fielding is eminently readable, that has to be said. I zipped through it this weekend, despite not really having a lot of time to read.

It's Laura Grant's second winter working as a doctor in rural Yorkshire, the story picks up somewhere after Ravensdale left off. Though Laura is undoubtedly the "main character", the narrative in this book is spread out over a lot of different people and stories, more so than the first one (as far as I can remember). I was show more particularly interested in Aimee and her relationship to her parents, but felt like Fielding tried rather than succeeded at dealing with the issues there. Aimee's mother is especially invisible, and although I realise this is part of Aimee's "quarrel" - that her father is too domineering and her mother just a foil for him - I think the story could have been made more interesting if we were treated to her mother's point of view, too (see, I can't even remember if she is named by name in the story).

There are also some relatively gruesome - or tragic - things going on, this is a crime story of sorts, in fact, that leave me more unconcerned than I think I'm meant to be.

Still, it's a nice read, and reading about the Yorkshire Dales still classifies as Not A Bad Thing.

Anyway, I'll be passing this Bookcrossing copy on (give a shout if you want it), and I'll be looking for the next (and, I think, last) book in the series. show less

Kirstie Scott has accompanied her family on a trip to the rodeo with the current guest at their dude ranch. While the rest of the attendees are cheering and clapping, Kirstie is stunned and appalled at the brutal treatment the horses receive - especially the wild horses trucked in for the wild horse race and bucking bronco events. One mustang in particular, a beautiful bay stallion, garners her sympathy, and when circumstances leave Rodeo Rocky to her care, she vows to make a ranch horse of show more him rather than see him bound for the sale barn and a short future as dog food.

Admirable. And completely understandable from the perspective of a thirteen-year-old horse lover who's completely unfamiliar with rodeo. But Kirstie has lived on a ranch in a ranching community for how long, and she's never attended a one? She's never seen steer wrestling or bronc riding? The rodeos are described as being regular events....

What is crystal clear is that the author a) knows very little about rodeo, and b) believes, or wants to give the impression, that anyone who participates in one is brutal, rough, and completely uncaring as far as the rodeo livestock goes. Okay, everyone's entitled to their opinion, and she's not alone in finding the sport violent.

But animal rights issues aside, there are major problems with the horse-related details in this book. Who turns a strange, wild, un-vaccinated stallion in loose with their riding horses, some of them mares, immediately on bringing him home! (And why not GELD him?) They've spent $2000 on him, but they're not going to pay the vet, (who's johnny-on-the-spot almost immediately, after the stallion kicks on of the other horses) to give him his shots until they've decided to keep at the end of the book? Not to mention the "training" sequence that has Rocky proceeding merrily down the trail saddled and bridled in approximately a week.

Yes, it's certainly an emotionally intense story. It's just too bad that the author didn't pay as much attention to the non-emotional detail. Apart from the rest of the problems, the plot is tired, and overdone. The characters are flat - none of them every really get beyond a canned stereotype, which is too bad. Since this is a series, it would be nice to look forward to meeting the characters again.

Final verdict? Not recommended. show less

This one had a delightful element of danger. I loved how Mandycand James, along with their new friend James, handled the urgency of helping Connie and stopping the horse thieves. There was excitement throughout this book.