Racing Savannah by Miranda Kenneally
Genre: YA Realistic Fiction
Blurb (on back of book):
They’re from two different worlds.
He lives in the estate house, and she spends most of her time in the stables helping her father train horses. In fact, Savannah has always been much more comfortable around horses than boys. Especially boys like Jack Goodwin—cocky, popular and completely out of her league. She knows the rules: no mixing between the staff and the Goodwin family. But Jack has no such boundaries.
With her dream of becoming a horse jockey, Savannah isn’t exactly one to follow the rules either. She’s not going to let someone tell her a girl isn’t tough enough to race. Sure, it’s dangerous. Then again, so is dating Jack…
MY OPINION: **
minor spoilers ahead
I went back and forth when deciding what to rate this book. On the one hand, I liked it considerably better than the previous books, but on the other, it didn't merit a four-star, well-written, charismatic, unforgettable novel. I finally decided on two stars only because of how many problems I had with it. It was not as bad as the previous books!
This book centered around Savannah, an aspiring horse jockey. It's set on a racecourse where Savannah's family works on with the horses. I used to have a strange obsession with horse movies and loved gems like Secretariat and I really liked seeing that representation in this book.
That being said, the plot was not my favorite.
Savannah comes off as a judgmental, confusing, slightly irritating girl. I never understood what she was trying to say and I highlighted a bunch of quotes that just made no sense. I did not like her personality in the slightest. She meets a boy named Jack, the rich son of the horse owners and also her boss. She immediately judges him to be a player, and an arrogant one at that, and tells herself she will not fall for him. However, she seems to fall for him within one second! She had no self-control and constantly put herself down for liking Jack when he obviously liked her back.
Savannah and Jack start a relationship; she seems to think it's serious but breaks it off when she realizes that Jack only wants it to be a friends-with-benefits, dirty-little-secret kind of thing. She's heartbroken and goes on a few dates with her friend's cousin who she randomly meets the wedding of Parker and Will from the previous books.
Jack had zero respect for women and only wanted to use Savannah for sex. I hated his entire mindset the entire time and he had zero redeeming qualities save for the fact that he's supposedly "hot". I hated his treatment of Savannah and found his entire character to be pompous and annoying. At least in the previous books, I shipped the characters!
Redeeming qualities of this book:
Although the characters were not my favorite, they were CONSIDERABLY less annoying than the previous characters, especially Kate from the third book.
I loved Rory. He was so sweet and funny and I'm glad he got his happy ending. Honestly, I would have liked him with Savannah over Jack.
Star! The horse was so adorable even though he had an irrational fear of guys. Though maybe not so irrational..
There's an almost-rape incident where Jack sort of redeems himself by saving Savannah from the creepy rich dude who wants to hook up with her. I found this all to be a really random and scary situation that didn't belong in this book. There has never been anything this serious or triggering addressed in this series and I felt like it didn't need to start now. It wasn't addressed with the proper consequences, despite Jack beating up the guy. Also, Jack refers to Savannah as his girlfriend in the middle of that fight and she just goes with it and suddenly they're together. Um.
Savannah also has a lot of problems of her own concerning money and her future. Her parents are fairly low-income and her dad just got his second wife pregnant with a baby that he doesn't have the money to afford. I totally understand Savannah's anger at her father for doing that because I would have felt the same way. She is the first in her family to finish high school (or be on track to) and has never thought about college. Her entire future centered around becoming a horse jockey. However, when Jack puts the idea in her head, she is at first judgmental but then realizes that maybe she does want to go to college.
Then her dad completely shuts down her dreams of going to college and it just made me so frustrated that he just didn't seem to care about his daughter's dreams at all. He tells Savannah that "she's changed" which makes absolutely no sense. If she wants to go to college, that doesn't make her a bad person.
There were a lot of things that I just didn't like about this book. I will be reading the next one, however, because seventh or eighth grade me apparently LOVED it. I need to see if my younger self was correct or if I was deluded. If I do like it, then I'll probably finish the series. I would recommend this book to readers looking for a contemporary romance.
Main Character: Savannah
Sidekick(s): Jack, Rory, etc
Villain(s): Class differences, misunderstandings, etc
Realistic Fiction Elements: This book was all real to life.
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