Not good.

Straight up, I have to spoil this book to explain how bad it is, because the central premise is so ridiculous it ruins everything. So there's twin thoroughbreds (rare but ok) and they're both pretty fast but one is outstanding (so good it's set track records at Belmont despite being unraced, which is impossible). The outstanding one gets spooked and tramples a groom in her stall, and the groom eventually dies, so everyone is convinced that someone (who? The "authorities"?) will make them euthanize her. Let's be totally clear here, that's not a thing that happens. There have been many Thoroughbred stallions with reputations for aggression far exceeding what's shown in this book, and they haven't been euthanized.

So they try to swap the twin horses around - and horse swaps do happen, but they're done for gambling money. Not because you've confused a flighty prey animal with a vicious dog.

The absurd plot might be redeemable if the writing was good, but uh... let's just say it's not my thing. If you think radio music should be described as "mind-blowing dissonances", a woman getting into a car as "[swinging] her adequate femaleness", and going for a walk as "to perambulate their new property" then it might be more your style. None of the dialogue sounded realistic, and the prose made me want to confiscate the author's thesaurus.

The author of this book tells a fairly good story, but the overuse of adjectives, adverbs, and vocabulary pulled from a thesaurus makes the style nearly unreadable for me as an English teacher. "Perambulating" as the character stokes his vehicle? Seriously! Just say sensuously. The characters seem realistic and the dialogue, especially between the mother and children, is appropriate.

When I pick up a book centered the world of horse racing, I don't expect the novel to be a literary master piece. But as a life long equestrian with a love of thoroughbreds and the racing world, I did expect the story to be engaging and at least grounded in reality. I have read some truly wonderful stories by people who know horses but maybe aren't quite ready to be published authors and I have read really well written novels from people who are clearly not horse people but manage to get enough right to not pull you out of the story. This book is neither well written nor written by someone who knows a thing about thoroughbreds and horse racing. It is a hot mess.

From the very first page the characters say things that just don't make sense. For example, the fancy thoroughbred that is coming to their farm has apparently broken a Belmont stakes record and yet they don't know if the filly has raced. The characters explain the most basic of concepts to each other, even though they're supposed to be established horse people and are not new to their jobs. Descriptions of characters, horses, and places are all overly verbose. Overall, it's a very clunky attempt and not one I would recommend others read.