Title My Golden Horse
Author Caroline Akervik
Genre Young Adult
Publisher Fire & Ice YA, an Imprint of Melange Books
Book Blurb:
Ellen Sanz is angry at the world, and she wants nothing to do with horses. Before her mother’s accident, they’d had a great life. Her mother, Linda, was a successful show jumper. Ellen had attended virtual school, and they’d travelled between international horse competitions. Everything had changed when Linda suffered a catastrophic riding accident. Ellen has been her mother’s caretaker in the year since. They’ve been forced to move to Linda’s parents’ hobby farm in the Maryland countryside. Here, Ellen finds herself irresistibly drawn to Lemon Meringue, nicknamed Tandy, a show ring sour palomino rescue mare, as well as to Joel, a cute and horse crazy guy. Can Ellen and Tandy let go of the pain of their pasts to embrace a new life and find that special connection?
Excerpt:
Chapter One
Peering through the trees, Ellen glimpsed the reason she was out in a midafternoon thunderstorm. A palomino horse galloped frantically in the pasture behind her grandparents’ yard.
“Tandy, I’m coming. You’re going to be okay,” Ellen called out to her. What was wrong with Tandy? Why didn’t the mare stay in the shed until the storm ended? There was something ominous and out-of-sorts about this weather. It had been a sunny if muggy June afternoon. Then, the sky had gone dark, and she’d heard the ominous grumble of thunder overhead.
I have no luck, Ellen Sanz reflected. This summer storm was just one more instance in a long line of misfortune that Ellen continued to experience in her sixteen years of life. Besides the horrific accident which had irrevocably altered her and Linda’s, her mother’s, life there had been other incidents which suggested that the fates were aligned against them.
There had been that time when Linda took Ellen snowmobiling up in the mountains around Lake Tahoe. At the time, Ellen had been about seven years old. It was one of the last vacations that she, her mother and her father, Daniel, had taken together as a family. On that day, it had been just the two of them, Ellen and Linda. Linda had said that she “had a special treat planned for them.” Now, nine years later, all Ellen remembered was the sensation of flying along on the snowmobile, an impression of bright blue sky and white snow, then the feeling of being catapulted through the air after her mother took a sharp turn. Ellen had landed so hard she thought she’d broken every bone in her body. She’d been unable to breathe. Predictably, her mother’s first words to her after the accident had been, “Don’t tell your father.”
Ellen hadn’t. Nevertheless, Daniel had left them shortly thereafter. He’d said it wasn’t about Ellen, that he loved her with his whole his heart, but he couldn’t take Linda’s desire to lead a gypsy life as a professional horsewoman. He’d fought hard to have Ellen live with him, but she’d fought equally hard to remain with her mother. Since then, it had been just the two of them, Linda and Ellen, against the world.
Linda had been an elite professional equestrian who lived an itinerant existence. Following clients and their horses, Linda and Ellen had done the winter show circuit in Florida. They’d spent their summers in Annapolis, Maryland, which was within reasonable driving distance of the horse shows in the Northeast. In Maryland, the stables where Linda had ridden had been a little more than an hour away from Linda’s parents, Betsy and Bernard Hogan, so Ellen had spent some time at their hobby farm. Annapolis was also reasonably close to Daniel and his new family, who lived in northern Virginia.
It had been an exciting life travelling from horse show to horse show, but it made attending school difficult for Ellen. She missed large chunks of time. In the end, it had proven easier for Ellen to attend a virtual school. It made sense; she’d argued with Daniel, who’d wanted her to have a more traditional high school experience. She wouldn’t miss anything academic in a virtual as opposed to a traditional school. For a long while, things had worked. Until their luck gave out completely, until THE ACCIDENT.
There was Ellen’s life before the accident and her life after the accident. Before the accident, Ellen and her mother had been a team. Linda competed and Ellen did schoolwork and took pictures of her mother and the beautiful horses she rode and competed. Now, Ellen was living at her grandparents’ hobby farm in Monkton, Maryland, tucked into one of the tiny rooms of their prefab house. It was the summer before her senior year of high school. She felt weird, and out of place. She had no friends in the area.
Standing on the porch, Ellen glared through narrowed brown eyes out at the blackened sky and the wind whipping the tree branches about. “I hate you!” she shouted into the rising wind. That stormy sky summed up her frustration with her life, with all that had gone wrong in the past few months.
Buy Links:
Giveaway:
I’m one of the authors participating in the Gobble Up Books Giveaway and you can win one of the following:
e-copy of Eagle River by Isabelle Kane (Contemporary Romance)
e-copy of Halcyon by Caroline Akervik and Ruth Rankin (YA Sci Fi)
e-copy of Summer Snow by Caroline Akervik (YA novella)
Runs November 1 - 30 and is open internationally for many prizes.
Winners will be drawn on December 1, 2022.
Author Biography:
Caroline Akervik has always been a voracious reader of most any genre, with the exception of horror, because it’s scary. Blessed with a wonderful husband and three amazing grown children, Caroline has worked as a horse trainer and as a school librarian. She remains an animal lover and believes that libraries are among the most magical of places. Her writings reflect the eclectic nature of her life and reading taste, and her books include sweet romances, horse stories and even science fiction. Caroline seeks to write from the heart, to transport her readers and to give wings to their imaginations.
Social Media Links:
Website: http://carolineakervik.blogspot.com/
Twitter: @CAkervik
Instagram: c_akervik
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