Review: Maggie Dana - Racing Into Trouble

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Maggie Dana: Racing into Trouble
Pageworks Press, 2012, £5.35 
Available in Kindle and Nook format: Kobo coming soon

Maggie Dana's website

Thank you to the author for sending me this book.


Racing into Trouble is the second in Maggie Dana's Timber Ridge Riders series. The first book, Keeping Secrets, saw Kate McGregor arriving at the stables to be a companion to Holly, who has lost the use of her legs.  Kate manages to overcome her crippling guilt over the death of a horse, and manages not only to ride again, but to do it successfully. Not only that, she builds a firm relationship with Holly and her mother Liz. This is all despite the machinations of Angela Dean, who loathes Kate.



The second book takes place shortly after the successful competition that crowned the last book. Angela is just as poisonous as she was in the first book. Here, she's cast on her own resources when her "friend" Denise moves, but the family who move into Denise's house are English, titled and their daughter rides. Angela announces that the daughter Jennifer West is her very best friend, in which she betrays her desperation. But Angela is not just desperate: she is jealous. To add to her jealous fury, it is Kate who gets to ride the difficult new horse Buccaneer, not Angela. Essentially lonely, and judging herself by her mother's shallow standards, Angela is desperate to maintain her feeling of superiority over Kate, and this leads her down some dark paths.

Kate does not always help herself: she charges in where angels fear to tread, and this gives Angela ammunition which she is only too happy to use to blacken Kate's name. Things just get worse and worse for Kate. She manages to alienate herself from Holly by a piece of spectacular thoughtlessness: she says the sort of thing that, the moment it's out of your mouth, you want to grab and cram back in, but it is way too late. Why should Holly worry about what she's wearing to a party, says Kate. No one will see it anyway.

Kate continually makes things worse for herself. She has an absolute genius for not quite doing the right thing. Maggie Dana takes you so successfully into Kate's head that you can absolutely see why she's acting as she is.

This book is another fine read: it ends on a positive note, but Angela Dean's not down and out yet.

These are really handsome books: I'm glad they're available in paperback, as they are so attractive. The paperbacks are now readily available, and they're well worth it.



My review of Keeping Secrets

My website page on Maggie Dana

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