Summer is usually a time of heat exhaustion and riding at the crack of dawn in Florida but this year Emily is on the road with up and coming show jumper Rae Willingham. Going from show to show to win points on the summer circuit and trying to prove that she is ready to take her riding to the next level. And now that Hanna has gone, things are going to be a little less dramatic, at least that is what she hopes.
But when a new girl arrives to replace Esther’s niece, Emily wishes that Hanna had never left because now she has some real competition. Someone who is just as dedicated and eager to get ahead as Emily is and as tensions rise between the two of them, the summer will become one long game to see who is the best.
And when Emily runs into someone at a show who is a part of her troubled past, riding a horse that she loves, her resolve will be shaken. They will have to ride against each other and in this endless procession of show days, hope that the best rider will win.
Claire Svendsen was born and raised in England, which means she talks with a vaguely cool accent and drinks a lot of hot tea. Obsessed with horses almost before she could walk, Claire spent her summers dragging the old family typewriter into the garden where she would write books about a rich family giving her a horse. Though she would like you to think they were the masterpieces of a young prodigy, the truth is they never went much further than the first chapter and were awful.
Claire likes to think she can write a lot better now. She also finds writing this biography about herself in the third person both weird and alluring all at the same time. Claire now lives in Florida because she doesn't like cold weather and when she's not busy writing, you can find her hanging at the barn with her thoroughbred Merlin.