A review by scorpstar77
Riding Lessons by Sara Gruen

4.0

I read Water for Elephants a few months ago, and I adored it. I decided I wanted to read some other books this Sara Gruen chick had written. Not disappointed. You can definitely see how her writing and story-telling abilities have progressed from this book, Riding Lessons, to her most recent, [b:Water for Elephants|43641|Water for Elephants|Sara Gruen|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170161179s/43641.jpg|3441236]. There's no question which is the better book, and yet this book is more than what you'd take it to be initially from the cover. It appears on the surface to be a slightly cheesy but entertaining romance novel centering on some "horse people". The heroine is a former nearly-Olympic-level rider who had a horrible accident in her youth and hasn't gotten back on a horse since. Her marriage has fallen apart, she's lost her job, her kid is in the throes of rebellious teenager-dom, her relationship with her parents is strained, and her father has been diagnosed with a terminal illness. She moves back home and falls back in love with her childhood sweetheart, but more importantly, falls back in love with a horse. It's that relationship, between her and the horse, that is one of the most stunning and incredible parts of this book. The other amazing relationship is what happens among her, her daughter and her mother, three generations of women, all very much the same and headstrong, and how they are able to help and heal one another, even through their conflicts. The romance takes a backseat in this book to the horse and to the female family relationships, and it's a better book for it. It knocks it up a notch, and Gruen's writing is just fantastic, as I expected.