This book was beautiful. The characters were so perfectly constructed, wonderfully flawed and totally 3 dimensional. Alice, the star of this book, is a young girl with a very difficult home and school life, absolutely pining for affection and a connection to humanity. Her older sister has run off, her mum sits locked away in a dark room, deeply depressed and cut off from the world whilst her dad is a horse trainer with dubious methods learnt from his father. The farm is struggling as is he, and the author draws beautiful parallels between his emotional state and the horses he trains. Some of the scenes were devasating in their grief, very confronting reading. I felt for these characters, every single one of them. A highly emotional read. Loved it.