Racing Savannah by Miranda Kenneally

Summary from Goodreads:

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…

Review:

So, I have a Miranda Kenneally addiction. I have read all of her books this year. And now I almost don’t know what to do with myself. I have to wait a long time for more. This wasn’t my favorite of her books, but I did still super enjoy it. If anything, it was nostalgic for me in that it reminded me of a show I was once obsessed with. Don’t judge me, but it very much reminded me of Wildfire (from ABC Family), and while to some people, this would sound like an insult, from me this is a compliment.

Like the star of the show, the main character here comes from very little money. She works with horses, dreams of being a jockey, and does what she can to support her family (aka: her dad, her dad’s pregnant girlfriend, and her future sister). Savannah knows that life is hard and because of her past experiences, doesn’t really ever pretend, hope, or dream for life to get much better. Her mother passed away years ago from cancer. And because her family didn’t have health insurance, her father is in incredible debt.

Savannah doesn’t even think of college as a possibility until the wealthy son of the ranch owner talks about it. She’s never been in love. And all she really wants to do and knows she likes to do is hang out and exercise horses. I like that Jack kind of inspires her to want more for herself. And I like that she refuses to have anything less than a relationship with Jack, even though she is like dying to touch him all the time.

Family is so important in this book and it was interesting to see both Savannah and Jack willing to give up so much of their happiness and themselves to help their families. It was a little weird to see Savannah’s father act so anti-college at first. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a parent respond to further schooling that way. But, I guess in this situation it made sense. I also liked seeing Savannah make friends at her new school and learn not to jump to conclusions about people, no matter what they looked like or what the rumors said.

Kenneally’s main characters always have something to learn about making assumptions about people. And I like this element to what I’m now seeing as her formula for good contemporaries. I also really liked the relationships of the side characters who worked for Jack’s family. There’s a lot of quirky jokes about Jack learning laundry. And it was fun to see all the differences between Jack’s world and Savannah’s.

Why was this one not quite as good as the others? I almost found it a little too formulaic. I like that her other books always had something that surprised me a little bit. They all had some deeper element to them that surprised me. And this book just wasn’t very deep. It was her fluffiest story so far. And fluffy isn’t always a bad thing. I did like the show Wildfire, remember?  I just guess I was expecting a little bit more. I know what this author is capable of and this wasn’t quite up to par with the previous one for me.

I did read this in one sitting. It is by far the least religious of the books (which was nice too). The characters were fantastic. The romance was sizzling. There’s lots of horses and racing, which added a lot of suspense to the story. I just don’t think it had quite as much depth as Kenneally’s other works. I give it an 8/10.