Title: The Horsewoman
Author: James Patterson and Mike Lupica
Year Published: 2022
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
What's it about?: A mother and daughter compete against each other in horse shows to be the best rider.
Likes:
The tension in this book is real! I kept sneaking peeks to the end of the page to make sure things ended up OK.
I could not handle the suspense - in a good way. Especially when they were jumping. I know how dangerous jumping horses can be at any level, but especially the level they are jumping in this book. I was worried with every competition that something would go wrong.
The Atwood women got into a big and hairy situation very fast. I wasn't even 20% into the book before everything was just a huge mess. I wasn't sure if things could keep going wrong, but they did. It seemed like the women would never have any good luck.
There are so many characters to be invested in. They all have their own personal problems and they also have their collective worries. There are so many moving parts in this novel that it kept propelling me forward to read just one more chapter. I stayed up far later than I wanted to most nights reading this book.
All the characters felt very believable. I may have only felt like I wanted a couple of the characters as friends, but that doesn't mean I didn't think they were well written. Everyone felt real. However, there could have been a bit more of the horse' personalities shown.
Dislikes:
There were at least five characters narrating throughout this book. I don't mind multiple narrators, but there were two factors that made the change of narrators difficult for me. First, most chapters are labeled as to who's perspective I was reading from, except for Becky's. When I got to a chapter without a character's name at the top I had to pause for a moment to remember who would be telling me the story in this chapter. Second, Becky was the only character to tell her story from first person, everyone else's chapters were written in third person. That could be a bit of a jarring transition that I didn't enjoy.
The timeline did not seem to be consistent. Some things seemed to happen a lot faster than time allows. There is an injury that seemed to heal a lot faster than it should have. I have no experience with that injury or anything like it, but it felt like only a couple of weeks passed even though I think it was a full month, and the injury seemed to be far too healed. There were also just a lot of jumps in time - this book covers many months - and even though I knew how much time the book covers. The story did not always translate time passing in a way that my brain could comprehend.
The characters feel very real, but some of them experience some excruciating physical pain that I was not able to feel with them at all. Falling off a horse hurts no matter what speed you're going or from how high. The characters experienced falls far worse than I have ever experienced thankfully, but I never was able to feel their pain. That is a difficult thing to get across. Because I felt every emotion and all the tension so vividly, I would like to feel the pain a little more too.
Every once in a while a sentence is written in such a weird way that I reread it many times to understand it. This of course took me out of the story completely and ruined my reading flow. I always understood the intention of these sentences, but they were very awkward to me.
The ending felt very abrupt. The main problems were resolved and then the story ended. I was still left with so many unanswered questions. Right now my biggest question is: Will there be a sequel? I want to know what happens to everyone!
Thoughts:
I believe this is my first time reading a James Patterson book. I was walking around Target and saw a book with a horse on the cover and ran over to it. It ended up in my bag and I've had a hard time putting it down since. I love this book. I had so much fun reading it.
I think the most telling way that this book did exactly what it was supposed to is that 90% of my reading notes are just questions. About 5% is disbelief of the problems these characters had to suffer. The last 5% is articulate thoughts about the story. Out of my many, many questions, a lot were resolved or I can come to a logical conclusion. There are a few that could have been answered by the end of the story but I never found an answer. There are others that are left completely unanswered and I want answers! I don't want to list any of them here because of spoilers.
I had such an enjoyable time reading this book. I felt real feelings for each character, and I want to know so much more about them all. I want to know about Becky's future. She still has so much life to live and I feel like she has more stories to tell.
I went into this book knowing literally nothing about it, so I really don't want to spoil any plot points at all. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and need someone to talk to about it! Please read it so we answer all my questions. I'll help with yours.