Review: Hannah Hooton - Keeping the Peace

-
Hannah Hooton: Keeping the Peace
Aspen Valley Books, 2012
Also available in Kindle format

Thanks to the author for sending me this book.


Keeping the Peace is something I freely admit I don't often read: an adult romance. Nevertheless, I've read a few, and I know the form.




Keeping the Peace opens as Pippa drives into the country to explore her inheritance from her uncle: two racehorses and a cottage. They are, all of them, more or less useless. The cottage has been neglected for years, and the horses are no hopers. Pippa's a London girl, and decides to sell the lot. She's not interested in the tall, dark, offhand trainer, Jack Carmichael. Of course she's not. She has a perfectly good boyfriend: that is if you count a selfish, social climbing "resting" actor as a perfectly good boyfriend.

However, when she visits the cottage, which is the idyllic sort buried in the country, it starts to work its charm. Then she finds her uncle's betting notes, which suggest that one of her horses, though no good now, will mature into a good Grand National horse. In a spectacular charge up north, she attempts to stop the sale of the horse. She doesn't succeed, but it doesn't matter, as he hadn't sold anyway. Pippa decides to keep the horse in training: a tad tricky now she's lost her job as a waitress, but that means she's free to move out of London. After Jack is left in the lurch by his secretary, Pippa steps into the breach, which allows her to keep her horse in training.

There is a form to these books: and if you have read any romances at all, you will not be disappointed, because this book follows that form to the letter. Plotwise, there are no surprises at all. Nevertheless, the racing background is well done and the characters are sufficiently masterful and brooding (Jack); irritatingly selfish (the boyfriend) and slightly scatty yet feisty (Pippa) for the whole thing to rollick along in a thoroughly entertaining manner.  Hannah Hooton writes well, and I was rooting for Pippa to succeed in her endeavours to keep the stables going, get  her horse to race, and get her man.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rollkur and the blue tongue

-
I've been meaning to write about this all week, but reading the exclusive in Horse and Hound about the controversy tipped me over the edge. For my non-horsy readers, rollkur is a training/warming up technique used by some dressage riders. It basically involves riding the horse with its jaw pulled in virtually to its chest, in order to increase suppleness. Patrik Kittel , a Swedish competitor in Odense was videoed riding his horse in this way. If you watch the video , you'll see the horse's tongue hanging out - blue. It takes a while before the rider notices this. When he does, he stops, puts the horse's tongue back in, and carries on. There are two things which bother me about this. Firstly, I am fully aware large sections of the dressage world, and some of its brighest stars, consider rollkur perfectly ok, but the FEI guidelines state this practice should only be for short periods, allowing the horse to rest. Patrick Kittel apparently rode the horse for two hou...
Read more

Archibald, don't eat the bedclothes

-
Image
My friend Louise sent me this picture today. It's from a children's book with the rather wince-making title For The Wee Ones. I thought, when I read that (because I read the message before I looked at the picture) that the picture was going to be a typical winsome production from the school of artists who think (or who are paid to think) that the child is a thing sent from God and a blissful thing. They had obviously never met a child, and certainly not mine. I should have known Louise better. The artist responsible for Archibald, don't eat the bedclothes slipped this one past the editors. Just look at the poor, broken Mother Rabbit. She knows she has not the faintest chance of being listened to, and poor thing, she is stooped in the way of a mother to whom this is just the lastest in a long line of horror; with nothing good to come. And Archibald is obviously the spawn of the Devil. Just look at those eyes. He'll have the bed after he's finished the bedclothes...
Read more

Dick Sparrow - 40 Horse Hitch, and Neil Dimmock's 46 Percherons

-
Image
Here's a clip of Dick Sparrow driving 40 horses. It's an amazing sight, particularly when the shot changes to show the team from the rear and you get the great incongruity of modern American corporate architecture as a background to the wagon and horses. I love the anticipation in the video: the sense of something amazing being just round the corner is palpable. Thanks to Christina Wilsdon for telling me about this world record 46 Percheron hitch (alas just stills) but you get the idea.
Read more