Twelve year old Mary has a passion for horses.  She dreams of riding them and being a great horseperson.  But there’s one thing standing in the way of Mary’s dream – legs that won’t work.  After she caught a virus as a young child Mary lost the use of her legs and has become quite proficient at getting around in a wheelchair.  Mary’s Song is the tale of this twelve year old’s endeavours to get her legs back and to save a lame foal.

Mary and her father live next door to a horse breeding facility.  Mary is rapt when one day her neighbour, another twelve year old girl – Laura – turns up with a horse and buggy.  She is there to make friends.

As Mary learns that her favourite foal has something wrong with its leg and may need to be humanely put out of her misery, she is devastated.  With Laura they formulate a plan to save the foal.  On top of this, Laura is persuaded to help Mary get up in the saddle on a horse.

Mary struggles with an overprotective father whilst Laura just wishes her parents would notice her.  As the two build a friendship, they find that with Mary’s determination and faith in God, that it is possible to get her on horseback.  And it even seems that Mary’s legs are strengthening.

Mary dreams of herself being restored to full functioning legs.  She has the same prayer for her young horse friend.  As she fights for what she believes in, it’s hard for her father to ignore her determination.

Mary’s Song explores a little bit of the Christian faith, horse care and riding as well as young girls standing up for what they believe in.  It is very horse focused and is bound to engage young horse fans.  Recommended.

Author – Susan Count
Fiction – pre teen
In my library – I have an electronic copy.

I’m not sure if I downloaded this Kindle book after finding it from my search term of horse or Christian, but either way it looked like it had both of these things! Love the Lord Your God with All Your Heart tells the tale of 25 year old AJ. AJ lives at home with her mother, father and younger sister. She lives in an abusive home and feels like a child in spite of her age, based on the way her father treats her. Her best escape is her beautiful warmblood gelding, Midnight.

Although she helps out with the youth group at her local church and has a belief in God, she struggles to understand how He could let bad things continually happen to her at the hand of her father.  Only her best friend Brenna is aware of the abuse and AJ works hard to keep the façade of a happy family.  But when a snow storm shuts her in at the Cooper family’s property where she keeps her horse, AJ finds herself coming to know Mac the Youth Pastor beyond a superficial level.

When Mac suspects what is going on with AJ, he is keen to step in and help her, but she refuses. It is only through offering her a job with the horses as the barn’s head trainer that the two connect. As she accepts the job and escapes the dangers at home, AJ finds herself drawn to Mac’s reliable, safe character.

But just as things appear to be turning around for AJ, it seems that gossip and pride have the potential to ruin things.  Love the Lord Your God with All Your Heart is a very Christian focused story that addresses issues of purity, abuse, poor motives, gossip and pride.  It addresses well the issues of judging a book by it’s cover and examining one’s true intentions.  On top of this, horses feature highly in the book and it’s lovely to read about the horsemanship that AJ utilises to try to bring around an ornery mare.

There is a sweet romance amongst the story but also the chilling topic of family violence.  Right toward the end I didn’t see how the story was going to be wrapped up when such a devastating event occurred.  The Christian faith follows throughout the whole story and it focuses on how often doing the right thing isn’t the easy way out.  An engaging read.

Author – Anne Perreault
Fiction – Adult
In my library – as a Kindle.