Parker's Passion

Thoroughbred #61

by Joanna Campbell (Creator), Karle Dickerson

Parker has never wanted to run Townsend Acres,
but when Brad makes him an offer he can't refuse...

Parker Townsend has always had one passion: eventing. And as he works with a legendary trainer in England, it seems as if Parker's dreams are about to come true. But Parker's scheming father, Brad, wants Parker to give up his “foolish” dreams of competing in the Olympics to manage Townsend Acres when Brad retires.

Parker isn't tempted . . . until Brad buys two horses whose lineages can be traced back to the legendary Welton line! Horses like these would improve Parker's chances of competing in the Olympics, and staying in Kentucky would mean more time with Christina. In his head, Parker knows that he'll be better off if he continues with his training . . . but his heart has other ideas.

Be sure to check out the photograph and bio of the legendary Welton Romance inside!

Genres: Horses, Childrens, Animals, Young Adult

166 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2003

About the author

See Jo Ann Simon

Reviews

[Phoebe Chiu · Rating 5 out of 5]

The series is soooooooooooooooooo good! It tells about a girl's life while living on a farm; but the great thing is that you don't have to like/know about horses to read this series. It also includes a teen romancey kind of thing.

[Rena Sherwood · Rating 2 out of 5]

This title is, without a doubt, the absolute worst in the entire series. I'm even counting the Super Editions. The title makes this sound like a soft porn romance novel, doesn't it? Well, the "passion" winds up merely referring to Parker's obsession with getting on America's Olympic eventing team, despite seemingly screwing his chances up again ... and again.

The Parker Townsend storyline made zero sense. By book 25, it looked as if the series was going in two alternate directions -- that of racing and eventing. Melanie would race, Christina would event. Then, it all went pear-shaped in book 36, Without Wonder. Just how much of the blame for the astoundingly stupid depths this series would plummet lies at the fault of the ghostwriters is unknown, but the ultimate responsibility lay with publisher HarperCollins. They let a promising series go to shit. There was absolutely no attempt to keep any sort of continuity going, or even hire writers that knew anything about eventing or horse racing. The sole exception was Jennifer Chu, but she got canned after only three books because she made too much sense, I guess.

Karle Dickerson tries to make the Townsends as evil as they used to be, but winds up making them look more pathetic than anything else. There still is, and never would be, a backstory as to just what happened to Brad's mother, and why Clay Townsend scarpered off to England. Whether HarperCollins provided the rough storyline or if it was all Dickerson's twisted idea is unknown.

This story, and all of the Parker books, would wind up being throwaways. Parker's storyline is never fully resolved. This book's plot, if you could call it that, has no relation to the real world. It has some funny moments, in a Plan 9 From Outer Space way.

Although not mentioned on the front cover, this would be one of the first books to have a bad black and white photo and tiny bio of a famous real Thoroughbred in the back. That some HarperCollins executive probably got a bonus for coming up with this bone-headed promotion scheme shows you how little the publishing giant cared about the readers they'd wind up cheating.