****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
You know those books you just don't want to end? For all of those who loved Susan Archer's "Stake Night," featuring champion Saddlebred horses Torreador, Night Train, and their owners, vets, stables, trainers, and riders---the tale continues ahoof in her new adventure, "Show Time." New readers certainly will want to take the opportunity to check out the first volume.Many of the memorable characters return from "Stake Night," and we are introduced to some new roles (both rich and regular, show-quality and slow-quality rides, locals (Texas Beauty Queen) and South African imports (Happy Dance), new rivalries, and, somehow, ever more interesting deep-dives (to me at least) into this once-exotic (again, to me) world of horses.My horse-set friends appreciate even more than I do how the book gently weaves in descriptions of and reasons for the varieties of bridles (and other "tack"), horseshoeings, and rider gear---each tailored to critical aspects of certain levels of competitions, horses' habits and form, rider and trainer habits/form/experience...and, of course owners' finances and egos. Egos of horse owners, riders, trainers, stables, and of the horses themselves, play recurring roles as well.You can't help but get involved in what will be, to some readers, a wonderful new, but actually fully-formed and functioning, world. This is not a sport or pastime for the weak-hearted. It is, though, a book for the open-hearted.Enjoy the ride!
