Horseplay

August 15, 2004
When Judy discovers her husband cheating on her one time too many, she leaves him, quits her teaching job, takes her inheritance, and sets out to become a working student at a dressage farm. There, she shares an apartment with several zany roommates, all of whom love horses and are more than willing to muck out stalls in order to be taught riding by a former Olympic contender. First novelist Singer knows the territory, having written feature articles for various equine magazines and ridden the highest level of dressage, Grand Prix. Chick lit in a horsey setting, this is a fun, fast read about a world populated with Jack Russell terriers, dressage instructors with foreign accents, charming bad men, determined women, and expensive horses. It will find a home on the shelf next to Lorna Landvik's Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons and Elizabeth Buchan's Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman . Recommended for all public libraries.--Patsy Gray, Huntsville P.L., AL

Copyright 2004 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2004
When Judy Van Brunt catches her husband, Marshall, in his third infidelity, she decides she has had enough. But she does more than just leave him; she quits her teaching job and heads south to a North Carolina farm owned by a horse trainer named Katarina, for whom Judy hopes to work. Soon she is living in an apartment above the barn with three other women and an unruly teenager, and slaving away as a groom during the daytime. The work is hard, but Judy loves riding (even if she has to try to manage the ornery Ivan) and soon finds herself being courted by Speed Easton, the most eligible bachelor in town. And though she is plagued by both her husband and a snotty socialite who might have designs on Speed, the happiness Judy gets from working with horses and her friends on the farm far outweighs any problems. Some of the secondary characters are cliched to the point of caricature, but readers who love horses and light, funny reads will enjoy this debut.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)