A-
Genre: Contemporary Romance, Romance
Theme: Fish Out of Water, Sports, Workplace
Archetype: Athlete, Doctor/Nurse/Veterinarian
Two months ago, I would have told you VERY VERY firmly that sports contemporaries were not my thing. Not at all. Now I have to say that they are, but the list of sports I’m into is very very VERY narrow- figure skating and uh, polo apparently. Look, there are horses and there are white pants. I’m a simple girl.
This is the first book in a series presented by Nacho Figueras, one of the world’s best polo players and face of Ralph Laurens’ polo line, which take place in the rich and fabulous world of elite polo players.
(Nacho and his team recently played a match against Prince Harry, and here are the two of them in the aforementioned white pants and thanks to the Fug Girls for this.)
Our heroine is Georgia, a veterinarian who lives on her father’s small farm in the Catskills. When her BFF Billy presents her with a plane ticket to go to Wellington, Florida, with him, he has good reasons. It’s warm in Florida, there’s a polo tournament happening, plus Billy has a new boyfriend he wants Georgia to meet and (he hopes) get her approval of. Georgia agrees, somewhat reluctantly.
Our hero is Alejandro, the recently widowed (widowered?) now-patriarch of a polo family from Argentina. He’s got a team that just isn’t gelling the way they should, a cranky teenage daughter who isn’t handling the death of her mother very well, and a family business he’s trying to hold together with his bare hands.
The meet-cute happens when Georgia is watching a polo match (with Billy acting as the explainer for Georgia as the audience surrogate- he explains how the game of polo works for those of us who are just in it for the breeches), and she notices that one of the horses on Alejandro’s team is exhibiting subtle signs of an injury. She saves the horse from a life-threatening injury, and Alejandro fires his (clearly useless) team vet and hires Georgia for the rest of the season.
The both try very hard to resist their attraction- he is her boss, after all, and he’s working REALLY HARD at focusing only on polo and not anything distracting like nice wine or nice girls from the Catskills (it’s not working). For her part, he’s her boss and she’s going back to the Catskills once the season in Florida is over. No reason to get involved in anything messy that involves feelings, right?
Right.
Naturally it doesn’t work out that way. Weirdly, once they start flirting and flirting-plus, his team starts winning polo games, but they have a lot of issues to get past. Georgia doesn’t fit into the high-falootin’ world of rich people who watch polo ALL the time, and she’s got parental abandonment issues. None of these things add up to a simple, “Hey, I like you, you like me, let’s go bang behind a tree!” resolution, but we do not read romance because we need simple resolutions.
The best part, for me, was that Whitman understands that her audience may need a quick primer on how polo works, and explains things like why polo ponies are called ponies, even though they are not actually ponies, and how a match is structured, and those traditions we plebs only know about because of the polo match in Pretty Woman. She explains the important bits, but doesn’t get bogged down in the minutiae.
There’s also a subplot with Alejandro’s daughter and how she uses riding as her coping mechanism. I have a friend who owns horses who has a frighteningly smart and extremely sensitive daughter. When she was shopping for the right horse for her daughter, she wanted to make sure that her daughter had a horse friend to help cope with the inevitable stress that comes with being a sensitive kid. (She did, and they’re all very happy.) I loved that part in particular.
Also, and you know how I like this, Whitman also knows her horses, and the horses have personality and quirks and one of them has a BFF companion horse and that’s how that works sometimes.
The ending wraps up kind of fast, and involves lugging a couple of horses cross country only to, presumably, turn around and go home, which is RUDE and not that good for the horses.
This was a sweet romance and had complex families and also sorts of mild angst and horses and I liked it a LOT. There are two more books in the series, and I’m excited to read those. There’s dudes in polo pants, and also ponies.
Like this:
(Thank you Prince Harry for, you know, all of that.)
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Thanks for the review. I was wondering what the “Nacho Figureas” thing was. I thought it might be a telenovela link. I blame “Jane the Virgin”.
Horses are a much larger part of the Florida economy than many folks realize, so I may pick this one up. Where I live is horse breeding country, and South Florida is the racing and polo scene. Sounds interesting.
I just love that his name is Nacho Figureas and that he is presenting romance novels about polo. It’s all so…specific.
This one does intrigue me though, so I think I’ll pick it up to read on our vacation this year where sadly, there will be no polo.
I don’t think I’ve ever read a review on this site where I’ve got less than a paragraph through it before going to buy the book 🙂
Oh my, that hug between Nacho and the prince! This the first time I’ve paid more attention to the pics than the review.
I am looking forward to reading this book. Thank you, Redheadedgirl, for the review and the validation the horsie details are right.
Polo is my favorite spectator sport. The matches move quickly and those white pants! If you all are interested in a fun afternoon, look for local polo matches. Small time teams and really exciting games, usually with an Argentinian player or two in the mix. And, just like the Queen, you can stomp divots during intermission. Back when we lived in southern Ohio, we spent many Sunday afternoons in the back of our pickup watching the local teams play and tailgating. The locals call it “beer and brats” polo.
@Kasi
Just reading the words “Nacho and the prince”– Sound like a potential title to me.
That’s a very sincere hug, isn’t it? Nice to see. I like horses and this sounds like a good book. Ye wish list, she burgeons.
If you’re in the mood for some trashier polo stories, there are some old Jilly Cooper books – Riders, for one, if I remember correctly.
So… this would be Nacho average romance novel?
(I’ll see myself out.)
@Todd – Riders is about showjumping (and is awesome, in a book-written-in-the-seventies way). She wrote one in the same series called ‘Polo’ which is about, er, Polo 🙂
Rudyard Kipling wrote a short story depicting polo from the point of view of the horses: “The Maltese Cat” (the “Cat” is a horse so named because of his agility). Worth reading.
Thanks for the snort laugh PamG and Bex! Seriously, how does one manage to look so fit while hugging?! In my peasant world, people sort of smoosh together when they hug. I would totally read “Nacho and the Prince”…maybe they could be secretly saving the world and at the same time searching for sincere ordinary gals to smoosh up against!
Wait, wait! I see a new section up at the top of reviews, with archetype links? Did I miss a launch post?!?
@Cordy: No, no, you didn’t miss anything. I’m working on that explanation now!
Oh man, I have been looking forward with fingers crossed to this announcement ever since it was first hinted at! Frabjous day!
I’m interested in how Wellington is depicted. I live about forty five minutes from there and Polo is a huge thing there–they have the Hall of Fame after all.
If you like this, you’ll love Polo by Jilly Cooper – plenty of romance and some incredibly suspenseful match scenes that I can’t believe were written by someone who doesn’t play. I couldn’t put it down.
I’m sorry,I hated this book. And yes, I did finish it. I think, in the end, there were more descriptions of tight white jeans on firms butts (seriously, that was a lot) than there were of emotional motivations. I never get the sense that the leads actually LIKE each other. Respect, professionally, sure. Lust, yes. Like? No, there’s no laughing dialog, no bonding, very little talking. The heroine is also… a doormat. She is sexually harassed and refused to complain about it. She finally says something, only to have to be physically rescued. Then she goes home and cries. Why? Bc she disappointed herself by speaking up. Aside from lust, there’s very little reason for these two to get together.