The One Dollar Horse, by Lauren St John

The One Dollar Horse is like a classic and a modern fairytale all wrapped up in one. It has that feel-good essence you get from really good chick-lit or from a younger children’s book like The Secret Garden or Ballet Shoes, but without the overly smoochy tendencies of the first or the old fashioned societal set-up of the second. I’m a girly girl in that I like stories with horses or ballet or happy-ever-after endings, so this was bound to be a win-win book for me, and with it’s hot-pink pages it’s definitely being aimed at the girly market. But, that said, I truly believe this is a book to be enjoyed by even those who wouldn’t normally pick up a horse book, and that is because, really, the horse story is just a side-line to the classic character arc, the ups and downs of pursuing your dreams, no matter what those dreams happen to be.

Casey Blue does not have the most auspicious of backgrounds, but living in a tower block in East London with her just-out-of-jail father doesn’t mean she can’t dream any bigger than the rest of us. Horse mad, she volunteers at the local riding centre and figures if she’s lucky she’ll train to be a riding instructor there one day. But then everything changes when she and her father save a horse from certain destruction. Downbeaten and starving, will the horse even survive his first night in the stable? I don’t think I’d be giving too much away by saying yes, and that he turns out to be rather a gem. Casey has always dreamed of competing at the Badminton Horse Trials: will the One Dollar Horse be able to take her there?

Lauren St John’s story covers an unusually long time period for an older children/teen novel as Casey slowly trains herself and her horse, begins competing, struggles, pauses, picks herself up and starts again. At least two years have passed by the time we reach the conclusion, a time period that other reviewers have argued is unrealistic in terms of horse training. But, really, that doesn’t matter. This is not a book you start reading in the knowledge that its story-arc is going to be entirely reflective of real life, and this fairytale aspect is what lends itself to the feel of modern classics like Ballet Shoes, and that One Dollar Horse emulates perfectly. It’s a story not about what it takes to train a horse for Badminton, but about following your dreams, believing in yourself, overcoming struggles, and seeing things through to their conclusion. It is, in short, a dream come true. The adults among us know full well that this is not the sort of thing that happens every day - and the people around Casey are apt to remind her of this fact too - but sometimes it does, and we all secretly hope that we’ll be the ones who get to experience it.

Casey’s struggles are topical and, mostly, realistic - money, social typecasting - and the fairytale storytelling is further affirmed by the presence of a fairy godmother-type character who comes to the rescue in moments of direst need. Although officially classed as a teenage title by Waterstones, the content is such that it is perfectly suited for younger children as well, perhaps from the age of nine or ten if they are strong readers - comments from a mum in my shop suggest that some of the themes (eg. Casey’s father’s criminal activities and their implications) may need explaining to younger readers, but that otherwise her eight-year-old enjoyed it and is looking forward to the next installment, Race the Wind, out in April. To this end, there was a particular storyline that wasn’t tied up at the end of One Dollar Horse, which I hope will be picked up again in the sequel. Something tells me that Badminton is not the end of the road for Casey, and I’m looking forward to finding out what happens next.

I must say how nice it is that there are still new stories like this one being written, that the traditions of authors like Noel Streatfeild and Eva Ibbotson are still alive and kicking. And also how nice it is that a book of this ilk is being aimed at teenagers, a genre so often swamped with dark romance and the assumption that the only thing teenage girls want to read are soppy love stories. Don’t get me wrong, soppy love stories definitely have their place, but there is so much more to life. In many aspects this book is a love story, but it’s not all about the boy and who’s kissing who; rather, its focus is on finding the positives in life and fighting for your place on the ladder instead of letting others decide it for you. If you enjoy it, try some of Lauren St John's other books, or Maggie Stiefvater's excellent The Scorpio Races.

Insurgent by Veronica Roth

Insurgent, part two of Veronica Roth’s Divergent series, launches from the very moment at which book one, Divergent, finished. Literally. I think maybe a few minutes have passed, and this is just brilliant because I didn’t want to miss a single moment of Tris and Four’s story.

Insurgent manages to be different to Divergent and yet the same. I’m not going to say anything about the storyline for fear of raising Divergent spoilers, suffice to say that things have changed and Tris is fighting as hard as ever for the freedom to live as she chooses. The challenges thrown into her pathway - or whose pathways she decides to leap headlong into - are bigger, more life threatening, and have more far-reaching consequences than those she faced in Divergent. Roth has definitely stepped up the action and, while the choices Tris faced in Divergent were more personal, more about what was right for her and her small group of friends, those in Insurgent are more about honoring her parents’ legacy and seeking the greater truth.

The ever-dreamy Four, Tris’s love interest, suggests Tris is being reckless, but from her (and my) point of view, it it is more that she is trying to balance her Abnegation ideals and her Dauntless ideals, trying to do what she thinks and feels is right. And it turns out that the difference between her two factions are not that great: the Abnegations belief in selflessness is equal to Dauntless’ requirement of courage in the face of danger. Courage to do what is right, and courage to put others before yourself. Sometimes this requires self-sacrifice, something which the proud Four seems to have trouble understanding.

Actually, Four is rather blinkered throughout the whole story. Whether stubborn or prejudiced - or both - he refuses too see what Tris is trying to tell him (though, granted, she doesn’t really try that hard). While, as a reader, it gets a little frustrating that the two of them seem so doggedly stupid in their inability to simply communicate openly with one another, I guess they each have their reasons for shutting off. And, of course, this all adds to the tension. Not only did Roth keep me asking, ‘what is really going on, what is the truth?’ and ‘how is it all going to work out?’, but also ‘how are Tris and Four going to work out?’ The conflicts are well-developed; a relief because I think if done by a lesser writer, they could have been frustrating.

The biggest problem I have with Insurgent is that I am now going to have wait however long for the next installment. I would say to Veronica to hurry up and write it - actually, I will say exactly that - but with an amendment: take your time writing it, too, because I want it to be as good as parts one and two! And that’s no small pressure.

Divergent by Veronica Roth

Its not very often that I re-read books. Not because I don’t want to, but because there are so many unread books out there. Thus, re-reading is usually reserved for when I’m unwell and need that comfort of something familiar, something that I know will work out alright in the end - Harry Potter or anything by Eva Ibbotsen. This week, though, I have been re-reading Veronica Roth’s Divergent.

What is Divergent about? I always have great difficulty trying to summarise Divergent for my customers at Waterstones. It’s set in a future world where society is comprised of five factions, each one characterised by the ideals it subscribes to. Citizens are born into a faction, but when they turn 16, they undergo an aptitude test to determine with which faction their temperament more closely adheres to. It’s the choice of a lifetime: to stay with their family or to change allegiance, and risk never seeing them again. Tris’s choice is made even harder; her aptitude test reveals that she is a divergent, that she has no single overriding aptitude. How can she possibly know which faction is going to be best one for her? And, even worse, if anyone discovers she is divergent, her life will be forfeit.

Clearly, there’s a lot more to this book and this world than the above. The boundaries between factions, instead of maintaining peace, as was the original intention, are breaking down. The factions are supposed to make everything black and white, but Tris is set to discover that the truth is usually grey. Factions, instead of leaving each other in respectful peace, are starting to criticise one another, to demand change. Is war on the horizon? And Tris’s chosen faction is definitely not what it seemed. People are out for power, and they aren’t going to let little things like morals get in their way. 

This is a novel written for teenagers, and so incorporates all the teenage standards and coming of age stuff: drama, action, a bit of romance, and learning to question what, in childhood, what was easily accepted. It’s great escapism, and that’s one of the reasons why I chose to re-read it. Another reason is the dreamy Four, who I defy anyone not to fall for. Also, the follow-up to Divergent is released in May - Insurgent - and I was having trouble remembering exactly what happened at the end of Divergent. I thought about just re-reading the last few chapters, but caved and decided I needed to learn about Four from the beginning all over again!

Verdict? It was as good this time around as it was the first time. There are a lot of teenage dystopian-style books on the market at the moment and this is definitely, in my opinion, one of the better ones. And I’m not just saying that because I’ve got a crush on Four. It compares favourably with Susanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy, as well as Ally Condie’s fantastic Matched. They all tackle similar issues, granted - the role of government in determining the minutae of everyday life being a significant theme - and to someone who isn’t that bothered about teenage books they make look similar, because they tackle similar ideas (the utopia/dystopia boundary, governmental power and corruption), but each one has does have an originality rather than just hashing out the same basic storyline. And, even though I’d read it before, Divergent still got my heart pounding just as hard this time around.