Ashleigh Miller has landed a riding scholarship to the prestigious Linley Heights School and she's determined to make the most of it. It's an incredible at Linley she'll train with some of Australia's best riding instructors at a state-of-the-art facility and compete on the school's polocrosse team. She'll even have horsemanship as a subject in school! Still, it means that once again Ashleigh will be the new girl, and she knows from experience that isn't easy. With a germophobe roommate who's determined to get the school's horse program cancelled, a history teacher who hates her from day one, and a rival rider who's jealous of Ashleigh's scholarship, Ashleigh's got her work cut out for her. She vows there's nothing she won't do to prove herself at Linley, but as her attempts to show she belongs become dangerous, she risks losing everything. For the first time, Ashleigh doesn't have being totally horse mad to fall back on. Could moving away from Shady Creek have been the worst decision of her life?
I started this series at the beginning, and must say that I was a bit disappointed in this book compared to the others in the series.
It was still a worthwhile read, very realistic and very enjoyable, but I found that it was slow to come to the climactic point in the story and then ended very quickly. I thought there was a bit too much fluff - I understand the funkhana set up India for disqualification and the whole Lightning bet but I think there were other ways that this could have been accomplished that didn't take up almost 20 pages.
Anyways, I am still really enjoying this series and am looking forward to the last book. 7/10 stars
Promising but they should SERIOUSLY do something about bullying and teaching the other kids tolerance.
The bully India we all knew what to expect from her even from Emily's horribly toxic family, but that germophobe Claire was a monster. So because she's a clean freak and everyone in her circle (especially idiot adults) hates horses, she thinks it's fine to harass all kinds of animal-lovers? Then harp on a pathetic anti-horse campaign? Ugh, people we found a mini-Karen.
IDC how "realistic" it is, one of these days that attitude is gonna get her in a lot of trouble someday. she'll run into someone who's not as restrained or nice as Ashleigh.