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oblue

Abandoned by Booklikes

Government drone by day and book lover and geek girl by night!

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This Time Next Year
Sophie Cousens
An Extraordinary Union
Alyssa Cole
A Princess in Theory: Reluctant Royals
Alyssa Cole
Burn for Me
Ilona Andrews
Nocturnes
John Connolly
After I'm Gone
Laura Lippman
The Black Angel
John Connolly
The Ballad of Black Tom
Victor LaValle
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Black Beauty

Black Beauty - Anna Swell I read this as part of Dead Writers Society Literary Birthday Challenge for 2016. I don't know what else to say about this book was that I found it to be sad and uplifting in parts.

Told in the first person, we have a young horse named Black Beauty describing his life and constantly changing homes throughout the years during the late 1800s in England.

Black Beauty was great as a narrator to his own life story and those of other animals he met. I loved so many of the other characters we meet like Ginger and Merrylegs.

I loved the fact that the other animals could "talk" to each other and relating their own stories to each other about what good men they had met and what cruel men they had met shaped them. Even though Black Beauty in the end more than anyone I think would have been justified in giving up, he still did what he could to be a "good" horse.

I was very disheartened to think upon what fates befell Ginger and Merrylegs and was really angry at the owners in this story who just kept selling horses to people with what I thought was very little thought made to what would happen to them afterwards.

For me, what made this story so fascinating was that I had no idea at all about things going on regarding horses in Victorian times. Reading about how men and women in high society wanted their horses craned very high in order to make them look more fashionable made me ill. I seriously had no idea this was even a thing. I guess I just thought people just put saddles and had reigns around horses and that was it.

The writing was really good. For someone with no idea about technical terms or anything else regarding horses, groomers, etc. this book was not too technical. I also really liked the flow of the book and thought the pace was pitch perfect from beginning to end.

The setting of England during this times also brings in discussions about the working class and looks more deeply at men who were cab drivers, groomers, farmers, squires, etc.

The ending made me very happy and actually tear up a bit.