This RITA® Reader Challenge 2015 review was written by LauraL. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Long Contemporary category.

Here is LauraL's review:

Sanctuary, West Virginia, is one of those places I would love to visit if it were real town rather than the product of a writer’s imagination. It’s a small town where friends and acquaintances bring the new veterinarian in town chicken soup when she comes down with the flu. An internationally known chef is said to bribe locals with food from his acclaimed restaurant on the mountaintop, The Aerie. Most of the houses in town were built before the Civil War and The Laurels, a major resort, is nearby. Residents are people like Claire the art dealer and Tim the veterinarian (our heroine’s boss) from Take Me Home and hunky lawyer Paul and Julia the artist from Country Roads. They all make appearances in this book, but I would consider it a standalone story.

On the outskirts of town is Healing Springs Stables where an Olympic gold medal equestrienne gives riding lessons, trains troubled horses, and helps people find their “whisper horse.” So, what is a “whisper horse?” According to Sharon Sydenstricker, the trainer at Healing Springs, “Everyone has a special horse – or pony – who will take on their burdens and help carry them.”

In The Place I Belong, a sickly, yet plucky, whisper pony takes on the burden of cobbling a family together and comforting a teenage boy who recently lost his mother. To get started, we meet Adam Bosch, the charming yet enigmatic chef, and Hannah Linden, the veterinarian with corn silk hair, who meet (and it is definitely not a meet cute) after Adam’s dog is mistaken for a bear and shot by a hunter. Luckily, it’s just a graze and Dr. Linden fixes up Trace quickly.

However, it is enough time for our hero and heroine to interact and feel that tingle of attraction start to grow. The chef talks the vet into taking his son on her rounds the next day, offering food as a bribe. (Naturally.) Adam feels his son was responsible for the dog’s injury and needs to learn about animals and their feelings. After helping in the clinic on a Saturday morning, Matt rides with Dr. Linden to the stables for some routine horse veterinary work. The author is meticulous with her horse care and barn life details which I appreciate as a lifelong horsewoman. At Healing Springs, Matt meets Satchmo, the depressed pony who lost his racehorse stablemate, and the two become friends. Ms. Sydenstricker determines Satchmo is Matt’s whisper horse and suggests Matt spend time at the stables after school.

As events unfold around Matt and Satchmo, our hero and heroine are thrown together time and time again. Hannah Linden is an intuitive veterinarian and is a good influence on both the animals and people in Sanctuary. In one sad scene, the young vet helps an elderly customer say goodbye to her old dog. Best of all, Hannah soothes the beast in Adam Bosch, who is darkly handsome, dresses all in black, and smells of spices. The chef loves to cook and to feed his neighbors and customers, even a sick whisper pony. He is a sensual person, wearing fine clothes and enjoying fine foods. He drives a Maserati to handle the curves on the mountain roads. He is hot in bed, too.

There are plenty of sexy times in the book as the intimacy and feelings develop when Hannah and Adam spend more time together. Most noteworthy is their first time together. When Adam first tastes Hannah, ahem, intimately:

“What?” she panted.

He lifted his head. “You taste like caviar.”

Beyond the sexual chemistry, the two of them each bring a cartload of baggage to this relationship and story, making them both question whether they should be together. Adam is an alcoholic who has thrown himself into his restaurant business. He had been surprised by a “secret baby” in Matt a few months earlier and is not sure he can be a good father. Hannah felt compelled to flee Chicago and find a new job in a small town after she was accused of animal cruelty by a high profile politician and was dumped by her fiancé. Rather than fill in the details of the story, I’ll say both Hannah and Adam face their demons in the last third of the book. Their inner and outer conflicts are realistic. Secondary characters have a big role in the resolution of the challenges as a small town takes care of its own. Everything then comes to a satisfying conclusion with an epilogue showing us all is well in Sanctuary. Even the pony is happy. And anyone who knows ponies knows that if the pony ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.

I looked forward to reading The Place I Belong a third, or maybe it’s a fourth time, for this SBTB review. The combination of this compelling couple, plus the location and the secondary characters, both human and animal, kept Adam and Hannah’s story in my mind long after reading the story, which made it an “A” in my book.