Thriller: The Horsewoman by James Patterson & Mike Lupica (Late -- Sorry!)

 

Author: James Patterson & Mike Lupica

Title: The Horsewoman

Genre: Adrenaline (Thriller)

Publication Date: 2022

Number of Pages: 433

Geographical Setting: Wellington, Florida

Time Period: Present Day

Plot Summary: Three generations of women have been raised in the business and passion of equestrianism. Grandmother Caroline owns a struggling horse barn. Her superstar daughter Maggie is right on track to go to the Paris Olympics on Coronado, an elite horse they've quite literally bet the barn on. Maggie's wayward daughter Becky is naturally talented, but does not yet have the keen focus of her mother. 

When Becky makes a mistake that causes her mother to get injured, Becky seems to be the only one who can save the family's honor and barn by riding Coronado. However, Maggie soon starts riding again against doctor's orders, and she wants her horse back. Hanging over them all is a manipulative businessman with the lion's share of financial stake in Coronado, and Becky's close friend and trainer Daniel, who is in danger of being deported. Becky, Maggie, and Caroline must overcome decades of tension to make it to the Olympics and save their barn.

Subject Headings (per Novelist): 

• Mothers and daughters
• Olympic games
• Horses
• Competition
• Humans and horses
• Equestrians
• Equestrianism
• Olympic athletes
• Interpersonal conflict

Thriller Appeals:

Pacing - "Thrillers move at a rapid pace, driven by the danger faced by the protagonist" (Wyatt & Saricks, 2019).

    This book clipped along extremely fast. The book was divided into 130 short chapters, which were  themselves made of short sentences and paragraphs. This structure lent itself into a quick reading experience. Almost every chapter ended on a cliff-hanger, so that the reader would be compelled to turn the page immediately. Chapters also jump between points of view to quickly move readers around the setting of Wellington without wasting time on traveling scenes.

Language - "These cinematic stories center on the plot" (Wyatt & Saricks, 2019). 

    This book sustained itself on sparse details. For instance, the reader never learns the coat color of Coronado, the horse at the center of the novel's plot and conflict. He is a large horse, but we know nothing else. When the bulk of the characters are introduced in the first chapter, the majority of them have no descriptive text attached. When Becky first mentions her trainer and love interest Daniel, it is by name only, in a scene stripped of any background setting: "It was why my trainer, Daniel, had taken to calling me Maverick, after the character Tom Cruise played in Top Gun" (Patterson & Lupica, 2022). This tied in with the pacing, in that it made for a quicker reading experience, since the reader was not tripping over superfluous description that would slow down the plot.

Characterization - "Secondary characters are less well developed and may even be caricatures" (Wyatt & Saricks, 2019).

    The characters in this book were trimmed down the bare essentials of personality. Becky is a party girl who must tamed. Maggie is ambitious. Caroline is standoffish. Daniel is level-headed and supportive. This is nowhere more apparent though than in that of the antagonist, Gorton. Gorton occasionally receives his own point of view chapters, where we see that he is misogynist, racist, classist, and more. While on the phone with a rival equestrian he is conspiring with, he describes the women he is in business with as such: "I actually kind of like Maggie. Might have tried to hit that under different circumstances. It's the kid and the old lady who piss me off. The kid especially. She looks at me like I'm old loser trying to hit on her" (Patterson & Lupica, 2022). Gorton has so little depth as an antagonist because any further depth would slow down the plot. While there are definitely ample plot twists and the "[essential] double crosses" (Wyatt & Saricks, 2019) delivered by these characters, they are in part in able to pivot so quickly because they are not bogged down by constant internal conflict.

Three terms that best describe this book:

• Fast-paced
• Compelling
• Suspenseful

Thriller Read-alikes:

The Ballerinas by Rachel Kapelke-Dale

Kapelke-Dale, R. (2021). The ballerinas. New York: St. Martin's Press.

Common Appeals: Competition between women, suspense, women athletes, ambition.

Daylight Second by Kelly Ana Morey

Morey, K. A. (2016). Daylight second. Auckland: HarperCollins Publishers

Common Appeals: Horses, sports rivalry, engaging.

Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Jenkins Reid, T. (2022). Carrie Soto is back. New York: Ballantine Books.

Commons Appeals: Sports rivalry, women athletes, winning and losing.

Nonfiction Read-alikes:

Out of the Clouds by Linda Carroll & David Rosner

Carroll, L., & Rosner, D. (2018). Out of the clouds. New York: Hachette Books.

Common Appeals: Equestrianism, horse sports, horse training.

The Ride of Her Life by Elizabeth Letts

Letts, E. (2022). The ride of her life. New York: Random House Publishing Group. 

Common Appeals: Horses, human-animal relationship, women athletes.

Let's Ride by Sheila Varian.

Varian, S. (2018). Let's ride. Independently published.

Common Appeals: Horses, horse sports, women athletes.

References

Patterson, P., & Lupica, M. (2022). The horsewoman. New York: Little, Brown and Company

Wyatt, N., & Saricks, J. G. (2019). The readers' advisory guide to genre fiction. American Library Association.

Week Three Prompt Responses (Late -- Sorry!)

 1. I am looking for a book by Laurell K. Hamilton. I just read the third book in the Anita Blake series and I can't figure out which ones comes next!

For finding out which book is next in a series, I like to use Goodreads or go the author's website! In this case, going to Goodreads showed me that the Anita Blake series is also known as the "Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter" series. The fourth book is called Circus of the Damned.

2. What have I read recently? Well, I just finished this great book by Barbara Kingsolver, Prodigal Summer. I really liked the way it was written, you know, the way she used language. I wouldn't mind something a bit faster paced though.

Another author is considered to have similar writing style and thematic presence to Kingsolver is Sara Gruen. You might enjoy her novel The Ape House, which is thought-provoking and detailed like Kingsolver's work. You could also check out Kristin Hannah's The Great Alone, which has a descriptive and engaging writing style but higher stakes that could increase the pacing.

3. I like reading books set in different countries. I just read one set in China, could you help me find one set in Japan? No, not modern -- historical. I like it when the author describes it so much it feels like I was there!

You might enjoy Craig Shreve's The African Samurai, as it takes place in the 1500s and follows the first foreign-born samurai. You'll also get a glimpse into other countries besides Japan in this novel. Maybe more on the nose though is Gai-Jin by James Clavell, which is more atmospheric and set in 1860. 

4. I read this great mystery by Elizabeth George called Well-Schooled in Murder and I loved it. Then my dentist said that if I liked mysteries I would probably like John Sandford, but boy was he creepy I couldn't finish it! Do you have any suggestions?

I would suggest Louise Penny's Still Life, which is in the first in a series. It has a leisurely pace and takes place in a small town. It shouldn't give you that same creeping dread as Sandford's writing. Follow Me Down by Marc Strange is also the first in a series and is often compared to Louise Penny's series as they both take place in small towns.

5. My husband has really gotten into zombies lately. He's already read The Walking Dead and World War Z, is there anything else you can recommend?

Your husband might enjoy The Zombie Autopsies by Steven C. Schlozman. It's a different take on the zombie theme as it follows some scientists on a remote island racing against time to find a cure for the zombie epidemic. Wicked Weeds by Pedro Cabiya focuses on how zombies might regain their humanity, delving even deeper into the ethical dilemmas of the partially animate. 

6. I love books that get turned into movies, especially literary ones. Can you recommend some? Nothing too old, maybe just those from the last 5 years or so.

I would recommend All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. His book was adapted into a film on Netflix. His writing style is so lush, it's like you're right there alongside the characters. I'd also recommend Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. This book was written by a zoologist, and her powerful descriptions of animals and the main character's own fascination rings with authenticity.

7. I love thrillers but I hate foul language and sex scenes. I want something clean and fast paced.

I found some books you might enjoy on a Goodreads user-created list called "Clean Mystery Suspense Books." Perhaps you might enjoy The Sleeping Girls by Rita Herron, D.K. Hood's Where Hidden Souls Lie, or Night Owl by Andrew Mayne.

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Anytime I see a book I might enjoy, I add it to a mega-list on my phone. This list is literally hundreds and hundreds of books long, and I just go down that list in order. I'll add books I see in the stacks at work, on TikTok, or in my friends' Goodreads posts, and just add them to my list.

My Reading Profile

I was an avid, book-obsessed child, but for a while I was a book-estranged adult. As a child I read lots of the big series--Erin Hunter's Warriors, Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson verse novels, and of course Harry Potter. I liked to read the same book over and over again when I was younger, rather than branching out. Rereading gave me more insight into foreshadowing, themes, and literary devices. As a burgeoning writer myself, this was more fascinating than "discovering" new books--though my opinion on that has since radically changed.

I will read almost anything nowadays. If I open a book, I will finish it. My threshold for entertainment is very low, so if a book entertains me, I will end up giving it 5 stars on Goodreads. I'm definitely capable of critical analysis, but when I'm reading for my own amusement, if a book holds my interest and I care about the characters--BAM! That becomes a five star read for me.

I do have my favorite genres. I love the world-building in fantasy and science fiction novels and will gravitate towards those over most other genres. I love to explore new worlds and to grapple with the ethical qualms of magical items, life-extending robotics, and more--it helps me to contextualize my own existence in this world.

For the past few months, I've finally taken the plunge and read most of Sarah J. Maas' body of works in her mega-verse. I enjoyed her fantasy young adult series Throne of Glass more than I've enjoyed her A Court of Thorns and Roses series, though that's probably because I get bored during spicy scenes and much prefer the epic love confession that comes before. However, I really enjoy the characters and world she's crafted, so I will continue to read the rest of mega-verse of hers with the Crescent City books.

Some of my all time favorite books are:

• Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao. This is a young adult science fiction reimagining of the only female emperor in Chinese history. 
• Sea of Rust by C. Robert Cargill. Robots win the inevitable human vs. robot war, but now they find themselves running out of parts and have to face their mortality.
• Lilith's Brood by Octavia E. Butler. This is a science fiction trilogy that I read as one brick of a book. Humans have destroyed their world, but are "rescued" by a species of alien that relies on breeding itself with other species to continue its own existence.
• Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon. I got this science fiction novel through ILL at the library I work at, and I almost stopped reading it because the print edition I had used a really straining font. I can't even quantify what was so hard to read about it. However, beneath that weird font was an amazing story about an elderly woman who chooses to stay on the outpost planet she's lived on after everyone leaves rather than be put into storage. Then, she meets the indigenous population of aliens that live on the planet that had been hiding this whole time.
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey. This is a classic literary fiction novel about a man who works in a home for the mentally ill. I will NOT watch the movie, though I'm sure it's amazing and award-winning and such.