Title: The Hidden Horses of New York
Author: Natalie Keller Reinert
Year Published: 2019
Publisher: Natalie Keller Reinert
What’s it about?: Racehorses, New York City, complex relationships, and scandals.
Likes:
This book feels like real life. There is a lot going on in Jenny’s life and she’s being dragged in multiple directions. There are layers to all the relationships and characters.
Just like this book feels like a true representation of life, it feels like I’m actually in the city. I’ve only been to NYC once fifteen years ago and I’ve never actually lived in a city, so I don’t actually know what it feels like. The best way I can describe how this book feels like being in the city is I feel slightly claustrophobic at times while reading it, and I mean that in a good way.
Jenny meets Janice and Cherry in chapter 10, and that was the first time I was properly engaged with the story. My interest was piqued, and that is my favorite scene in the whole book.
Jenny managed to get herself into a huge mess and since she couldn’t decide where she really wanted to be before the mess, I wasn’t sure how she would react to it. I liked that her reactions were not predictable for me.
The tension at the end became real and I wasn’t sure if I would get answers to everyone’s feelings for each other. I was very scared I wouldn’t.
Dislikes:
This book has a very slow start. For the first 100 pages, some things such as Jenny’s outfit and a neighborhood that was never visited again were told in so much detail, but they ended up having nothing to do with the story. Also during these first 100 pages, Jenny spent her time remembering stuff that happened before the book began, and as soon as something started to happen to her in the present the chapter ended. For example, she remembered how she decided to go to college in New York and the plans she made with her friends to stay in the city, then she worried about telling her parents she wasn’t coming home. When she did tell her parents her plans, that was the end of the chapter. Her parents were not given any opportunity to react for the readers to see.
Before Chapter 10 the only conflict that happened was Jenny not knowing where she really wanted to be – which she never seemed to decide on at all throughout the book.
Thoughts:
I have been wanting to read a book set in NYC for a few years now, and this satisfied that itch.
I have no interest in horse racing, but I did read a fair amount of the Thoroughbred series growing up so I have an idea of the behind the scenes of that world, and this was another look into that.
I knew going into this book about carriage horses and police horses in the city, I didn’t realize there were actually stables in the middle of the city. At least not stables that weren’t for those horses. I did expect from the title to learn more about the horses in the city rather than horses on the racetrack, and that is a topic I would still love to learn more about.
Although not every question I had was answered, I think most of the appropriate questions were answered. One thing not answered was: What’s Mister doing now? Is he racing for a few more years? Will Jenny keep him? He is such a big part of this book and after his final race in the book all I know is that he walked sound. Also: Whatever happened to the unnamed bay horse Jenny was so concerned about? Additionally, I am confused about some different things in Jenny’s life like why her parents let her go to school for journalism if they wanted her to run the farm.
This book was a very slow start, but once it started picking up I really enjoyed it.