I said in the lightning review of The Sport of Baronets that Theresa Romain basically created a series just for me, and the first full-length book just confirms it. She reached into my head and found the references and plot that would make me happiest, and gave those thoughts a beautiful cover and said, “Here!” (Actually she threw out the NetGalley link and ran away and then Elyse and I tussled over it and I emerged victorious because I fight dirty.)
This is the story of Nathanial Chandler, brother of Hannah (The heroine in Sport) ( A | BN | K | AB ), and his father’s secretary, Rosalind Agate, who took the job when Hannah left after her marriage. Nathanial has spent his life either trying to win his father’s approval and when it doesn’t work, he travels and then comes home to see if he’s a good boy. He never is, and the cycle continues.
Rosalind has many secrets of her own, including the fact that she’s working for someone else in addition to Nathanial’s father. When she was a 13-year-old girl, she was horribly burned, and a kindly widow paid for her medical expenses… and then has basically had Rosalind in indentured servitude for 10 years. It’s a deeply fucked up situation.
The Chandlers own a racehorse breeding and training interest, and it’s just over a week until the Epsom Derby. Nathanial’s father is in a wheelchair, so Nathanial gets to escort two horses to the race grounds. Rosalind is tasked to go with him, and the story proceeds from there. Rosalind has been tasked to spy on the Chandler family, for reasons unknown to her (Hers is not reason why, hers is just to do and die.)
First: Romain knows horses well enough to write them. Horses are ridiculous creatures that can perversely decide that a shallow stream is clearly full of crocodiles, so going through it is clearly NOT AN OPTION, or that a tree might really be a lion in disguise (I used to take lessons on a horse that would have to inspect the trotting poles every time they moved just to make sure they hadn’t turned into snakes. You know, just in case.) That’s one of the things that makes them wonderful: how many varied personalities you can find in one stable, but it’s also one of those things that makes horse people crazy. “We got on the trailer just fine yesterday. WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM.” “Um you might have put lions in there since yesterday, I DON’T KNOW.”
Second: Yes, Sir Chandler is a baronet, but before that he was a horse breeder, and he ended up getting his title (without lands or endowments) for providing the Army with cavalry horses, so he’s not reeeeeeeeeally High Society and Rosalind’s family runs an inn outside of London so she’s really NOT High Society and this is two people who don’t want balls and shit, they want a nice little life where they get to do something that makes them happy.
Third: Rosalind has burn scars over a significant part of her body, and when she and Nathanial do the do (come on guys, of course they do the do), he’s SO RESPECTFUL of how she would like him to approach the scars. Touch? Not touch? What makes her comfortable? And literally no one has ever asked that before – how she feels about them, what they mean to her. That was so sweet and so kind and delicately hot.
The thing that delighted me NO END was the fact that Nathaniel, upon hearing Rosalind’s name, quoted Shakespeare: “Just as high as my heart” and I went “WAITASECOND” and asked Romain if she was deliberately referencing Rosalind, the famous trotting mare immortalized in Marguerite Henry’s Born to Trot. She was and was SUPER IMPRESSED that I got there. Basically, her reading material in her youth and my reading material in my youth are very similar (Marguerite Henry and Walter Farley).
I loved this and it totally lived up to the promise shown in The Sport of Baronets. Now to train for the next fight over the next ARC (which I will win because I have a rider’s thighs and I can break necks).
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Oh, I’ll have to read this. I love a book with horses that actually knows horses (have you read Jane Smiley’s ‘Horse Heaven’? Wonderful book) instead of wittering on about (and this is a pet hate) ‘ankles’ – for the non-horsey among us, horses don’t have ankles, and the equivalent joint isn’t where you think it is.
And speaking of horses and their bizarre foibles – I used to ride a lovely Irish Sport Horse who’d stand quietly while a Nimrod landed 100 metres in front of his nose (I lived near a RAF base) but a wheelie bin? He’d have such a boggling boggle attack that you’d feel his heart hammering while you were sitting on him. Lunatic beasts, all of them 🙂
I’m not a horse person — I got bit by one when I was young and it’s been nope ever since but this really sounds like a lovely book so I’m going to give it a try because of that A rating
Oh, I’m going to need to read this. My mom helped place racing bets with my grandfather and had horses on the farm, so I’ve always had an appreciation for horses and horse racing. When we went to the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, my mom had the biggest fangirl moment at the Secretariat statue.
Oh, this has been on my list but when you mentioned the Marguerite Henry reference, I had to go one-click it. Thanks!
I loved Theresa Romain’s holiday books and was looking forward to this series and gobbled up The Sport of Baronets in one night. Love the reference to Rosalind, both Shakespeare and Marguerite Henry! Squeee!
Lifelong horsewoman and as I’ve said a few times around here, I really appreciate when an author who writes horses knows horses. Horses are capricious creatures. I had a hunter who did a little bucking bronco performance every time I showed him, usually when the judge wasn’t looking. My current elderly Appaloosa eats sticks out in pasture, but is picky about his handfed treats. Organic baby cut carrots, please. Can’t wait to read A Gentleman’s Game.
Love Theresa’s stories
So does dressage work better if you take a placid horse and teach it skittish horse moves, or if you take a skittish horse and get it to recreate its “I saw a ghost” moves in a pattern? (I watched that Eddie Izzard bit the other day and have been pondering dressage)
My horse girl ears swiveled forward when this was mentioned…and I LOVE the review (video & photo)…all the everything!I read/own all of Marguerite Henry’s books, one kind friend got me an autographed copy of King of the Wind. The best horse book written for adults (mystery with romance elements)was by Jody Jaffe’s Horse of a Different Killer. I will be reading this series next!
@Teev … wait. What? Eddie Izzard rifed on dressage??? Must.Find.NOW.
Ooooh, even more excited for this now! Just finished Sport of Baronets and loved it – it brought back all my horsey feels! I loved the Chincoteague books, the Black Stallion, the Saddle Club, and most of all, the Thoroughbred series. Some days I’m still sad that I grew half an inch too tall to be a jockey (never mind the lack of actual racing experience and all that yadda).
So true about horses being persnickety creatures. My sister has three and an endless store of funny moments. Her 20+ year old Tennessee Walking mare likes to escape the paddock and go graze in the alfalfa field next door!
RHG, just in case you missed them, Joan Wolf writes excellent historicals with horse-themed plots. One of my favourites is The Deception. And my favourite old-school romance is Penelope Williamson’s Once in a Blue Moon. The heroine owns and trains race horses and she’s delightful. The hero is a brooding soldier recovering from a wound in the Napoleonic war. Need I say more? The story takes place in Cornwall and London. The race tracks of course. No ballrooms for these two.
I love this author, and absolutely plan on reading this. But when she named the hero of her introductory novella Bart, and the book was released on Melbourne Cup day… Look up Bart Cummings. Twelve-time horse trainer winner of the Melbourne Cup, and one of the most famous horse trainers in history. Not romance- hero stuff…
CANNOT CLICK FAST ENOUGH. Loved the sport of baronets and literally gasped out loud when I saw this!
Pretty offensive that the publisher chose to go with a clearly un-scarred and fairly bare heroine on the cover. Boo hiss.
I started this but I found her writing style to be really difficult to read. I don’t know what it was, but it just didn’t agree with me. So, I filed it away and moved on to something else.