I grew up near Oaklawn Park in Arkansas, like three blocks away from the back side of the racetrack. There was a small rental house across the street from me where jockeys lived on a short term basis. The racing season in Arkansas lasted from January to April, and people followed the races from city to city--some were connected to specific horses, some were just roadies that followed the races and bet on the horses. One thing racing season always did was create unmovable traffic.
Piper owns a horse, Dream, that she wants to run in the Kentucky Derby, but first he has to qualify. Piper gets caught in a media storm that isn't all good and does more harm than good to her farm, Toni Shiloh has taken the racing culture and incorporated it into A Run at Love, the second novel in the Love in the Spotlight Series. There is some awesome horse racing information as well as a sweet love story that started when Piper and Tucker Hale were just elementary school children. Tucker is now Piper's trainer for Dream and travels with her from race to race. She has included some significant information about horses and the risks as well as the rewards from racing.
As with any good book, there has to be some tension to keep the reader engaged, and Toni uses the darker side of racing to provide that tension: doping the horses, equine flu, and other maladies that make the horses not perform as well as they should.
While there was some predictability and a bit of formulaic romance, the book is a solid read. Four Stars.
Bethany House provided the copy I read for this review. All opinions expressed are solely my own.
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