Melanie's Last Ride

Thoroughbred #29

by Joanna Campbell (Creator)

Will Melanie have to leave Whitebrook?

Melanie Graham loves spending time in Kentucky with her cousin Christina. She loves being away from New York City. And most of all, Melanie loves riding! That's why she's determined to win the competition next week. Her dad is flying all the way from New York to watch. Once he sees well how well Melanie rides, he'll let her stay in Kentucky for good.

But then someone begins sabotaging the other riders--and everyone blames Melanie! She might even be disqualified from the competition. Melanie knows that if her dad finds out, he'll make her go back to New York for sure!

Can Melanie prove that she's innocent in time for the big competition?

Genres: Horses, Young Adult, Childrens, Middle Grade, Animals, Contemporary

192 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1998

About the author

See Jo Ann Simon

Reviews

[Claire · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh lord. Now I've never been a huge fan of the Thoroughbred series and I only read a few as a child (those that usually had to do with jumping). I found this book at Half Price Books, and as per usual, I could not resist buying any book with a horsey plot line, especially those that involve my chosen discipline. For better or for worse, I bought this book and I read it in an airport while waiting for my flight home, trying desperately to conceal the cover so people wouldn't realize I was reading a kid's horse book (that never has stopped me anyways). Plus I just have this weird thing that I don't like people to know what I am reading.

First I would like to remark on the cover of the book. I'm fairly certain that the girl on the grey horse is supposed to be Christina (why they would put a secondary character in the center of the cover I'm not sure) and the girl on the paint horse is supposed to be Melanie. I like how Melanie is looking at the words floating above her head: "Will Melanie's perfect summer be ruined?" like she is actually considering the thought. My main point, however, is that Christina (or whoever the heck the person on the grey horse is) appears to be quite young and inexperienced, yet she is obviously riding this horse in a double bridle??? IDK, but this seems highly unlikely to me and she is most definitely holding the reins incorrectly. I would like to have a word with her trainer about bit choices. Not sure why this horse needs a double bridle since it is supposedly a kid's horse?

Now to the actual content. This book is basically about the world conspiring against Melanie and some jerk is framing her for all these things she didn't do. Now everyone hates her, including her cousin Christina, who apparently doesn't trust her cousin enough to believe her when she says ANYTHING. Then there is also the drama about Melanie's very busy father and Melanie fretting endlessly over whether or not he will make it to her dumb show, see how awful AMAZING she is, and let her stay in Kentucky for forever or something??? Not exactly sure what's going on there.

Basically the entire plot is Melanie throwing a hissy fit over something. Maybe it's the fact that everyone hates her and seems to be working against her. Maybe it's her pony being a pony INSANE. Maybe it's the fact that she keeps losing points and destroying her team and their chances of winning by repeatedly showing up late or forgetting to clean the poop off of her horse (I mean who cares about that anyways?). Maybe it's because her instructor seems to think that Melanie can't ride worth poop and should just hold onto her horse for dear life while he does all the work. Maybe it's the snobby girls who think they're better than everyone else present in every equine story line. Maybe it's that her cousin is obviously a much better rider than her. Maybe it's that somehow she accidentally killed some horse back home in New York and wants to hide it from everyone. Maybe it's that her father obviously doesn't love her or at least loves his job more so there's no way he'll ever fly down to Kentucky from the amazingly awesome NYC to watch his daughter fail miserably and probably fall off WIN EVERYTHING at some camp show.

But Melanie gets it even worse. She's blamed for something really really bad. Of course it only happens at the sake of putting the horses in danger, but that's beside the point because we have a plot to move along. Because obviously up until this point she seems like a psychopathic pyromaniac that will simply set the barn and all the horses inside of it on fire just so she can get attention and prove to everyone that she hasn't been sabotaging everything. She would totally risk all the horses she loves so much being burnt to a crisp because of some weird vendetta or something.

Oh, wait. No. That's Sean. Because they have to have a perfectly unreasonable reasonable scapegoat who is obviously troubled and calling out for help by lighting things on fire. Also he just wants to be called a hero so naturally he would create the disaster and swoop in to save the day. D*mmit Sean. This is not the way to impress your parents. Parents don't like to know that their kids are setting buildings on fire.

Melanie takes a while to figure this out because she's an idiot there are so many other suspects that we have to wrongly accuse first. Gotta make sure this book breaks 100 pages, ya know? She starts to notice Sean is acting weird probably because he likes to set things ablaze so naturally she starts to get suspicious.

Oh and did I mention she and her friends made up because they finally realized Melanie wasn't an insane megalomaniac that likes frying horses? Yeah, great friends.

Also HOORAY Melanie's father shows up and everything is okay and he actually does love her.

Back to the real plot. She confronts Sean and he gets all weird accusing her of killing horses willy-nilly and now she's sure Sean is a whackadoodle that carries around matches for fun. And Sean even admits it because that's the best plan of action when you're guilty. Immediately admitting to the crime you're trying to cover up. I'm sure he feels really bad though. He does apparently because he never meant to set the whole barn on fire, just the very expensive feed, but of course the fire got out of control and almost killed a bunch of horses.

Sean finally admits everything, but they still let him compete in the show because they don't want to penalize his team??? That doesn't make much sense to me, but then again, I don't run a horse camp for tweens. Those people seem to make the worst decisions.

With her dad watching, Melanie and her team screw everything up fail miserably as I predicted. But it's okay because her dad thought it was great and Melanie's really changed and now she gets to live in Kentucky for all of eternity.

We end the book with Melanie feeling like a real winner (basically the entire plot of every horse story ever).

Let's review the main lessons learned in this book.

*Find better friends that won't accuse you of doing terrible things.
*Don't set things on fire when your parents hate you. They will hate you more for it.
*Your dad probably loves his job more than you.
*You should just quit now.
*But don't worry because everything is all right in the end and you can blame it on some creepy kid that likes fire.

[Rena Sherwood · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were some aspects of the Saddle Club-like phase of the Thoroughbred series that I actually liked. For one, you didn't have to worry about a beloved racehorse breaking down during a race. There was more about the girls learning to ride. You also didn't have the pressure of having a beloved horse sold.

This book does have a crappy father threatening to sell someone's beloved horse -- but it's not the fathers of our main characters, so the pressure isn't that great.

This is a direct sequel to Camp Saddlebrook, so you really need to read that book before this one. You don't even need to read any other previous book in the series to get what's going on. Author Alice Leonhardt gives a bit of the backstory from the last book, but it's a bit scanty.

This time, we get to see Camp Saddlebrook through Melanie's point of view instead of Christina's. Melanie is a much more interesting character than Christina, so already that's a plus. We also get to read more of Tribulation (Trib), the mighty pinto pony with the spectacular name. He was one of the best equine characters in the series, but unfortunately, he gets dropped without a trace less than ten books later. At least Sterling stays on, more or less, to the end of the series.

In the meantime, we get to enjoy the silly but strange goings on at Camp Saddlebrook. Just who causes these strange goings and why is not hard to figure out. If you do want to read this book, don't read the preview page before the story starts. That gives too much away.

There is one extremely short passage that is one of the best of the whole series. Christina's parents come to the camp, but Christina only sees Dad. She asks where her Mom is. Dad replies that Mom is visiting Trib and Sterling, because she missed them.

This says a lot about Ashleigh. I wish the series had stayed more with Ashleigh as she became an adult, instead of drop-kicking her in book 5. But, that would've made too much sense. Can't have that in this series.

If you didn't like the pair of books about Camp Saddlebrook, don't worry -- you'll never hear about most of these characters ever again in the series.

[Alicia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book! It had a bit of a mystery element, but I also enjoyed the friendship between Melanie and Christina. There were a few parts where time skips just happened with no differentiation between one paragraph and the next, or where a time skip is implied but not needed. And near the end, it was implied that characters had conversations with each other, but we don’t actually get to see the conversations, we are just told that it happened and the result. Overall though it was a fun read 😊

[JoReads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Childhood favourite series (haven't read in a long time) giving all four stars unless it was a favourite as a child.