Lauren Brooke
The Heartland Series
1 Coming Home, 2000
2 After the Storm, 2000
3 Breaking Free, 2000
4 Taking Chances, 2001
5 Come What May, 2001
6 One Day You’ll Know, 2001
7 Out of the Darkness, 2001
8 Thicker than Water, 2002
9 Every New Day, 2002
10 Tomorrow’s Promise, 2002
11 True Enough, 2003
12 Sooner or Later, 2003
13 Darkest Hour,
14 Everything Changes, 2004
15 Love is a Gift, 2004
16 Holding Fast, 2004
17 Season of Hope, 2004
18 New Beginnings, 2004
19 From This Day On, 2005
20 Always There, 2005
Special Editions:
Winter Memories, 2004
Amy's Journal, 2006
Beyond the Horizon, 2007
Winter's Gift, 2008
A
Summer to Remember, 2008
Heartland 1 -
Scholastic -
Rating:
Heartland ticks teenage boxes: misunderstood teenagers; a girl who is the only one
who can heal horses; lots and lots of improving horses; a relationship and gamuts
of emotion. It features a tragic heroine, Amy, from a broken family, who lives with
her mother. Mama runs a horse sanctuary and re-
Not only is Amy misunderstood by her family, the books also have the constant of their equine rehabilitation practices being disapproved of (by a couple of deeply cardboard characters: Ashley Grant and her mother Val. Ashley fulfils the vital role in a teenage novel of bitchy girl who loathes the heroine). I hope succeeding books give the more traditional approach some credence: in the first book, it's dismissed as the realm of the pot hunter.
Most of the book is taken up with poor, misunderstood Amy storming off into her room; her tragic misery so awful that all about her must tiptoe about, making special concessions.
It might be because I have teenagers of my own, and have been on the end of a lot
of teenage storming, but I did not react at all well to Amy's massive self-
The frightful Amy does, at long last, see that she is being unreasonable (and all credit to her creators, I suppose, for making a character that certainly stirred me to depths of emotion I haven't felt for a character in a while). Oh, how I felt for poor Lou, Amy’s sister. She leaves her Manhattan life to come and look after her sister and try and organise the administrative chaos of Heartland, and does she get any credit for it? She does not. The worst scene happens when Lou finally cracks, and says what I have been muttering under my breath for pages: “"The only person you think about is poor Amy Fleming...”
So, I have very mixed feelings about Heartland. I don't like the idea that they're written to a formula, but they are; and they are generally well done. Although formulaic books, the authors take the conventions and twisted them: a less well thought out book would have had Amy being the Shetland's saviour, not big bad grown up Lou.
I like the emphasis on reading what horses are saying to you; and the advice is generally sensible, with the vet being constantly on call rather than an afterthought after the full ranks of the alternative medicine chest have been tried.
The one thing though, that I would absolutely love to know, is Amy's secret of time
management. She manages, in the succeeding books, to go to school, re-
Lauren Brooke is a publisher’s construct. The books are actually written by a team of three authors: Linda Chapman, Gill Harvey and Elisabeth Faith. “Lauren Brooke” has produced two series: Heartland, about an American horse sanctuary run by teenager Amy Fleming, her grandfather, sister and boyfriend. Having seen Amy into vet school, the team are now producing a new series: Chestnut Hill. This is set in an incredibly well equipped American boarding school, where riding is very much on the curriculum.
Both series are extremely popular with their target market.
An interview with “Lauren Brooke” (don’t think it was face to face...) Part 2 of the interview