The title of the book I read is called Take The Reins by Jessica Burkhart. Take The Reins is part of the series called “Canterwood Crest.” The main character is Sasha Silver. The setting is at Canterwood Crest, a boarding school during the school year. The main problem is that Sasha has to try to get Heather, the mean girl, out of her mind because they are competing for the advanced riding team.
In this book there is a lot going on. Sasha goes to a new boarding school and meets a girl named Heather. She’s trying to get Sasha to go back to a different school again, because she thinks that Sasha is better than her at riding. Sasha wants to be on the advance team in riding. On the advance team there are only five people who can get a spot on the team. That’s why Heather is afraid that Sasha is going to get her spot in the team. During this book you learn a lot about how boarding school is. Sasha has two best friends who stand up for her all the time. In film class Sasha meets a boy name Jacob. In the beginning she thinks he’s cute. Later on in the book they start hanging out. Closer to the end of the book the intermediate team which Sasha is on have to plan the winter party. Whoever wants to participate puts their name in a hat. Sasha’s name got picked out of the hat. She had to plan the party with one of her friends Page and her other friends Callie and Nicole. The day before the party she logged on to her email and asked Jacob to come out to the dance with her. One big event in the story that changed what happened is on Parents Weekend the parents finally found out about Heather. They were quite surprised. This changed the story because Heather started being nicer to Sasha because she knew she was going to get into so much trouble if her parents knew about her being mean. Sasha is nice because when her friend Nicole did not get on the advanced team she was not bragging about how she did. Sasha talked to Nicole to make her feel better. I also think she is brave because she went to boarding school and no one knows what could happen at boarding school because you can meet new people everyday. I also think she is brave because in the book she asks Jacob out to the dance. A good quote that helps me understand Sasha is when Page says “Do you like the furniture if not we can change it” and then Sasha says “I think it looks great”. I think that helps me understand the character because she is very loose about things and she goes with the flow.
I enjoy this book because it’s very fast and a lot of ideas keep popping up. One example for this idea is of the party that Sasha had to plan, and then a page later there’s a new idea of the advanced team. I also enjoy this book a lot because I feel really good when I hear stories that are specific about what they mean. One example for that is they describe how many coats of lip gloss Sasha puts on. This book reminds me of this TV series called The Saddle Club because it’s about horseback riding and in that story there’s a mean girl just like Heather. A rating of my book is 5 stars because it just is amazing and I want to read it again.