PBOTD: 31st March, KM Peyton - Blind Beauty
If I had to chose a favourite K M Peyton, Blind Beauty (1999) would be well up there. When I came back to reading pony books, I hadn't realised that K M Peyton had carried on writing long after The Team and the Flambards series. Blind Beauty is one of her later books, and it picks up one of K M Peyton's best-used themes: the girl who has to fight to make sense of her life.
K M Peyton's heroines don't get dealt an easy hand, and Blind Beauty's Tessa is dealt one of the nastiest of all. Her mother's married again: to Maurice, a rich but sadistic bully. Maurice can terrify Myra, Tessa's mother, into submission, but Tessa's not so easy.
Scholastic, 1999, cover by the author |
This doesn't go well at first, either, because Tessa hates everyone and trusts no one, but there's a horse called Buffoon, and slowly Tessa starts to find her way out from behind the walls of barbed wire she's built herself.
If you haven't read this, do. When I read it first, life stopped until I'd finished it. K M Peyton sucks you into Tessa's world. She's not easy, but you are right behind her, even during the book's most shocking moments.
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For much more on the author, see her page on my website.
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