Southern-feel, buried secrets and suspense to keep you on your toes, The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls is a peak into a time Thea Atwell will never forget…
Publisher: Tinder Press
Release Date: 6th June 2013
Source: Publisher
A little bit about “The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls”…
1930s America, southern high society: Part love story, part coming-of-age novel, this is the moving, raw and exquisitely vivid story of an uncommon girl navigating a treacherous road to womanhood.
Thea Atwell is fifteen years old in 1930, when, following a scandal for which she has been held responsible, she is ‘exiled’ from her wealthy and isolated Florida family to a debutante boarding school in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. As Thea grapples with the truth about her role in the tragic events of 1929, she finds herself enmeshed in the world of the Yonahlossee Riding Camp, with its complex social strata ordered by money, beauty and equestrienne prowess; where young women are indoctrinated in the importance of ‘female education’ yet expected to be married by twenty-one; a world so rarified as to be rendered immune (at least on the surface) to the Depression looming at the periphery, all overseen by a young headmaster who has paid a high price for abandoning his own privileged roots…
My Review:
The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls was mesmerising; I felt as if I were reading something like a diary from another place in time. The descriptive scenes were so vividly displayed that I could picture it clearly. The novel is set in North Carolina in 1930, after Thea; the main character, is exiled from her home in Florida.
The new world that Thea entered change her as a girl growing up in a different setting to what she was used to. I felt Thea’s voice echoed a true experience as I know the author had also had a childhood love for horse-riding.
Thea has to forgive and forget, for the most of it, and learn to take away something optimistic from her mistakes that she made in Florida and at the Riding Camp. In a setting of education, growth and complexity, The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls was a hit in my mind–something perfect for those nights when you want something passionate and youthful, something relatable and deep.
I thoroughly loved this book and recommend it highly. This book will definitely have praise and accomplishment and has the potential to be a huge bestseller. A massive 5 stars!
You can buy The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls from June 6th at all major bookstores! To find out more about the book, click here or join the conversation on twitter and hash tag #Yonahlossee!
Many thanks to Headline for the gorgeous ARC. I adored this book and I’m positive everyone will too.
happy reading,
xo Becca