Book Review: Thrown

Thrown, by Colette Auclair.

"What if he wasn't your boss? What if you met him at a Starbucks? Or in your case, the hay bale outlet."

Her eyes flickered away from him and she looked around as though the answer were somewhere on the stones of the patio. She sighed. "It wouldn't matter. I'm leaving in September, and I don't do flings." Except maybe with Luke, she added in her head.

"Ah, but you'd consider it."

"He's very attractive. Anyone would." She hoped she sounded flippant.

"But you're not just anyone, Amanda Vogel. Neither is he."

Thrown is a love story with horse elements, in that it's about a woman who falls in love with her boss, whose children she is teaching as first-time riders. It's being marketed as "steamy" but really is more PG or PG-13 than R-rated, in my opinion, and focuses a lot on the main character's relationships with everyone in the novel and not just with the man she eventually loves.

Official synopsis:

In THROWN, professional trainer Amanda Vogel dreams of riding jumpers in the Olympics, but after seeing her best friend die in a riding accident, she’s so traumatized she can’t show. Broke and desperate, she takes a summer job in Aspen teaching some big-shot widowed movie star’s spoiled daughters to ride—even though she hates teaching kids. She braces herself for three miserable months. But by Labor Day, she has to choose between capturing a gold medal…and the man who has captured her heart.

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Amanda Vogel, our protagonist, is set on one day making the Olympic riding team, even though she recently had to sell her favorite horse, Edelweiss, due to financial problems. She takes a job in Aspen for the summer so that she can make some money, and ends up teaching the children of Grady Brunswick, a famous (and famously hot) actor. The kids are resistant to riding at first, but soon begin to enjoy it.

I mostly liked this novel but it wrapped up a bit too perfectly at the end, even though the main characters take a while to acknowledge their feelings for one another. The book sometimes seemed long, too, even though it's only about 320 pages; it's available in e-book format only, but I had a bound (printed) galley which I read.

The characters and situations were definitely believable, but I wanted more out of the story. I'd recommend this book as a light read, though, if you're looking for a fun novel that has serious elements as well.

3 stars out of 5.

*Disclosure: I received a copy of this novel for reviewing purposes. The opinions expressed here, however, are my own.