Wild Horse Summer

The main plot here could easily have fitted into those now defunct text comics for girls, where put-upon young heroines week after week just get by despite enmity from outside and a chronic sense of inadequacy within. But while the reasons for 16-year-old American Morgan Taylor’s belief that she has done something terribly wrong remain unconvincing and somewhat under-written, her current state of misery and the way she gradually climbs out of it still makes for gripping reading.

Arriving in Devon to escape her past, Morgan helps out at a good but failing riding school while hiding the fact she is an excellent rider herself. She gradually bonds with a horse that like her has lost all confidence, and their wary courtship is well described. But it is still a tough journey for them both, and the author writes knowledgably about all matters equine. Wild Exmoor ponies act as a silent yet supportive chorus as Morgan accepts an epic challenge that will save the Centre where she has begun to be happy. The previous unpleasantness in America is finally explained away through the efforts of Cal, a boy friend in the making so pure that where a previous girl was concerned: ‘Last year he had almost kissed her at a party. The next day, he’d been relieved he’d caught himself in time.’ A narrow escape, indeed.

Lauren St John has written many successful stories for children and adolescents and plot-wise knows what she’s doing. She also brings into her fiction a fine understanding of the countryside where horses roam, some wild, others only just tamed. Once started, this is a story difficult to put down, even though it is obvious that everything will eventually work out for the good. Who would wish for anything else?