The Horsemaster's Daughter

Rating:
Summary: Worth reading.....
Review: " The Horsemasters Daughter" was a good book, however it took a long while for the story to grab hold of me...it sort of felt like it was split into 2 separate stories...first at the island and then later at Albion. I liked Eliza well enough, but I had a hard time connecting with Hunter. Honestly my favorite character was Hunters 9 year old son, Blue. This was a worthwhile read, and though I would have liked to have seen more of them, it was a pleasure to revisit with Ryan and Isadora from "The Charm School" I cant say that this book made it to my keepers list, but I have to admit that this story had an extremely satisfying ending that left me smiling.

Rating:
Summary: What a touching story
Review: A bruised and battered male heart and an incomplete and innocent female heart. These two lovers have many issues to overcome, and they do so admirably. Hunter is a great character, with both faults and heart melting tenderness. He knows what is "right" and what is "wrong", but his struggle with the debts his father left him, a vain and self absorbed wife, owning and then freeing slaves and trying to make a go of a horse farm that everyone looks down upon, leads him into a downward spiral of loneliness and alcohol abuse. Ms. Wiggs gives the reader a fairly good insight into Hunter's character and makes him very human. I enjoyed reading about that, as opposed to the clichéd perfect hero or reformed rake.

Eliza is also an interesting character, though to me a little less believable. The literary allusions and outright comparisons to Shakespeare's Tempest were well done and integral to the plot. I do not know if anyone could truly be as isolated as Eliza and then have such keen insight to Hunter and his children's problems. Her father raised her to be perceptive, learning how to read a horse (which she uses to read humans as well), yet was able to hide so much from her. This dichotomy was a little much for me.

All and all though, I loved this book. It was different and refreshing, unlike so many of the other hackneyed stories out there. The plot moves along and the secondary characters add much to the story. Ms. Wiggs, please keep up the great writing!

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Summary: Her talent for healing goes beyond horses
Review: Eliza Flyte wouldn't know this though. She's barely been around people. All of her life has been spent in seclusion with her reclusive father, a horsemaster renown for his uncanny ability to tame wild horses, who retired from England to Flyte Island to raise his daughter. When he was unexpectedly killed, presumably for his witch-like talent, his daughter, Eliza continued on alone on the island, saddened by her loss but soothed by the memories of her father, which she associates with the island. But her isolation is intruded upon when plantation owner, Hunter Calhoun, arrives on the island in search for her father.

Hunter Calhoun's last hope is the horsemaster, Henry Flyte. The horse he purchased from Ireland, to save his family from financial ruin, arrived in a maddened state and has been deemed a menace. The horse has already killed a mare and maimed a man. But when he hears of Henry Flyte, he decides to give the horse one last chance. When he arrives on Flyte Island only to discover the Horsemaster's daughter, Hunter is fully prepared to kill the horse. But Eliza prevents him from doing so and eventually teaches him what her father taught her: the secret to healing a broken horse.

The Horsemaster's Daughter is a wonderful story about a girl who, unaffected by society's narrow-mindedness, infuses a man with hope even while she frustrates him with her self-confidence. Susan Wiggs has done a terrific job of illustrating how Eliza's power to heal horses can also be used to heal people. As Eliza demonstrates, the key is patience and understanding. Eliza displays these traits in spades when she is forced to leave Flyte Island and travel to Albion with Hunter. Eliza is a simple girl and she doesn't understand the malice of Hunter's society friends who are amazed by her and cruel when it comes to her ignorance of their ways. Even Hunter is at times impatient when it comes to her unsophisticated way of thinking. But Hunter has problems of his own. His children haven't been the same since his wife's death and he is resentful of his father who gave him a life full of high expectations but left him with nothing but a bitter reality. But with Eliza's help, Hunter and his children reconnect and learn to embrace life and love once again.

Rating:
Summary: Somewhat disappointing
Review: I count some of Susan Wiggs' novels among my favorites, such as "Passing Through Paradise," and, most especially, "The Lightkeeper," but I found myself mildly bored with this one. It began interestingly enough; Hunter, an embittered widower, seeks out a reclusive horsemaster to tame his crazed prize horse. Turns out, the horsemaster is dead, but his daughter, Eliza, claims to possess her father's skill and persuades Hunter to stay while she tames the horse.

Eliza is charming; a sheltered girl alone on a small island with a gift of healing. Hunter is a tortured alcoholic unable to connect with his children after the tragic death of their mother, and struggling to make a formerly successful tobacco farm into a sort of racehorse ranch.

Sparks fly between Hunter and Eliza near the beginning of the book, culminating in their making love on the island, but when Hunter persuades Eliza to return home with him to become governess to his troubled children, the story changes focus towards the children, Eliza, and horses, and Hunter strives, (rather too successfully), to keep Eliza at arm's length, certain of her unsuitability as a wife to him, though he apparently has feelings for her (which I found somewhat difficult to discern). Throughout the book, however, there are several references to his flouting the common convention of post-Civil-War southern plantation life, to the shock of friends and neighbors, so I found myself wondering why he'd give a fig what they would think were he to marry Eliza.

The characters of the two wisened, elderly black women who chose to stay on with Hunter's family, even after he freed all of his father's slaves, were scarcely ever mentioned after the first several pages of the book.

Worth a read, but not my favorite from this talented author.

Rating:
Summary: A GREAT BOOK
Review: I enjoyed reading this book, and would suggest it to others looking for a good romantic novel . . .If you want to read a book that goes straight to your heart, read Stolen Moments by Barbara Jeanne Fisher. . .It is a beautiful story of unrequited love. . .for certain the love story of the nineties. I intended to give the book a quick read, but I got so caught up in the story that I couldn't put the book down. From the very beginning, I was fully caught up in the heart-wrenching account of Julie Hunter's battle with lupus and her growing love for Don Lipton. This love, in the face of Julie's impending death, makes for a story that covers the range of human emotions. The touches of humor are great, too, they add some nice contrast and lighten things a bit when emotions are running high. I've never read a book more deserving of being published. It has rare depth. Julie's story will remind your readers that life and love are precious and not to be taken for granted. It has had an impact on me, and for that I'm grateful. Stolen Moments is written with so much sensitivity that it made me want to cry. It is a spellbinder. What terrific writing. Barbara does have an exceptional gift! This book was edited by Lupus specialist Dr. Matt Morrow too, and has the latest information on that disease. ..A perfect gift for someone who started college late in life, fell in love too late in life, is living with any illness, or trying to understand a loved one who is. . .A gift to be cherished forever

Rating:
Summary: wonderous
Review: I truely loved reading this book.
This is the sequel to The Charm School and I found it better than it's prequel. I was swept away by the romance, the challenges of taming a mad horse, and the frustration of dealing with a child who was so depressed by his mother's death that he refuses to speak. I couldn't put the book down! I finished it in record time. This is one of the best works by Susan Wiggs. Nothing I've read after this could even compare.

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Summary: RESEARCH if you're going to write historical novels
Review: p. 11
" . . .the room contained only the most necessary of firearms--a le Mats revolver, a percussion shotgun and a Winchester repeating rifle."

The first rifle to bear the Winchester name was the "Yellow Boy" (because of the brass frame) the "1866 Model". Unfortunately this particular scene is supposed to take place in 1854. A 12 year goof.

Jean Alexander LeMat obtained a patent for an open-frame single-action revolver 1n 1856.

Food, clothing, slang, etc. are all part of the background of an Historical novel. It's difficult, if not impossible, to get it 100%, but this is just bad! How much time would it take to google on period firearms?

Rating:
Summary: An Afternoons Enjoyment
Review: The horse deserved a star. He had more charm than Hunter did. I did find it hard to relate to an alcoholic. To me, his children should have been important enough to for him to give up the bottle. Eliza was spirited and charming. Honest and without pretension, she faced her problems, and her grief, head-on. As for Hunter, I'm not really sure he was grieving for his wife. At one point he doesn't know if he ever loved her and she is portrayed as a society-conscious, self-absorbed woman who did not understand his ambitions. Later, it was she who was mis-understood and abandoned. He also later mentions the possibility of losing two women he loved. Did he or didn't he. I also thought that the dilemma of Eliza's parentage and the parentage of Hunter's nephew were solved unrealistically easily. Slavery was an issue our country spent four long hard years battling over. It is likely that Eliza, Hunter, and his nephew would have spent their entire lives dealing with the injustice of a race-conscious society. Reading this book was like trying to connect the dots without having all of the dots, using your fingernail as a pen. For a great Susan Wiggs book, try "Charm School"

Rating:
Summary: The audio was distracting
Review: The story was great! A strong romance between two very different people. The only gripe I had with the story itself was that the way the first wife died was excessive. I mean, don't just do something for the gross-out effect, you know?

My real problem with this version was the audio track. The woman who reads the book reads all the characters with RIDICULOUS accents. They are distracting and unappealing. I'm sure if I'd read the book instead of listening to the audio track, I would have liked it more.